Conservative MP Dean Allison plans to hold town halls across Canada to hear from more people who say they were injured by COVID-19 vaccines, following an inquiry held in September.
“As long as people are struggling to get answers, medical care, and the support they need, their stories must continue to be heard,” Allison told reporters at a press conference in Ottawa on Nov. 5.
“That is why we are planning on holding town halls across the country, giving more Canadians the opportunity to come forward and share their experiences.”
Allison described the inquiry held last month as an “important beginning,” but said it was never intended to be the “end of the conversation.” He said hundreds more Canadians want to share their experiences and that he intends to “give them that opportunity.”
“These Canadians deserve to be heard. They deserve answers, and they deserve to know that they have not been forgotten,” he added.
The Allison Inquiry was a non-partisan initiative chaired by Allison that provided a forum for Canadians who said they were injured by COVID-19 vaccines to share their experiences. It was not mandated to make findings of fact or determine medical causation.
From Sept. 8 to 11, the inquiry heard from more than 50 witnesses selected from over 1,400 people who applied to testify.
Several witnesses who testified at the inquiry said they had difficulty obtaining medical care and support despite having received compensation through the federal Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP).
The Public Health Agency of Canada assumed administration of the program on April 1 and renamed it the Vaccine Impact Assistance Program (VIAP).
Allison compared the federal government’s response to reported COVID-19 vaccine injuries with compensation efforts following the country’s tainted-blood scandal in the 1980s, in which thousands of Canadians contracted HIV or hepatitis C through contaminated blood and blood products.
In 1989, the federal government announced a $150 million compensation package for people infected with HIV through contaminated blood products. A subsequent settlement of about $1.1 billion was negotiated for people infected with hepatitis C through the blood system between 1986 and 1990. In 2006, the government announced another settlement worth nearly $1 billion for people infected with hepatitis C outside the period covered by the earlier agreement.
Allison contrasted those amounts with the approximately $20 million paid to Canadians whose vaccine injuries were recognized under the former VISP program, calling the amount “minuscule.” Federal figures put VISP payments at approximately $21.5 million between June 2021 and November 2025.
Allison has called on the federal government to provide additional funding for VIAP.
He also raised concerns about a recent access-to-information request involving millions of pages of vaccine and adverse drug reaction records dating back to 1998. According to Allison, Health Canada issued a processing extension of approximately 15 years.
Health Canada said in response to an access to information request in May 2025 that the extension was requested due to the request being several million pages long.
Allison also called for clarification from Health Canada on what steps were being taken to identify and investigate potentially underreported adverse events following vaccination, whether people reporting vaccine injuries were receiving appropriate support, and what independent oversight was in place to ensure public health institutions were transparent and accountable.
“We cannot change what’s happened in the past, but we can certainly learn from it, and we can insist that our institutions do better. Canadians deserve transparency,” Allison said.
Liberal MP and Parliamentary Secretary to the Health Minister Maggie Chi said during a House of Commons debate Oct. 23 that while vaccines “save lives,” some Canadians have also experienced negative effects.
Chi said the federal government had established a program to compensate people injured by vaccines and would continue working to ensure those affected received support.
Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada told The Epoch Times in a statement in September that the VIAP “draws on lessons learned from the previous VISP, as well as best practices from similar programs administered by Quebec and G7 partners.”
