OTTAWA — A four-day hearing led by Conservative MP Dean Allison opened Tuesday on Parliament Hill, offering Canadians a public forum to describe injuries and deaths they attribute to COVID-19 vaccines.The Allison Inquiry will hear testimony from more than 50 witnesses before concluding Friday. Organizers say more than 1,400 people applied to participate.The proceedings are being broadcast through the inquiry’s website.The inquiry is privately organized and is not a government-appointed public inquiry or formal parliamentary committee proceeding.Its rules say it will not make findings of fact, determine medical causation or reach conclusions. Panel members may, but are not required to, refer questions arising from the testimony to Parliament.Allison told the Western Standard in a June interview that his primary goal was to give Canadians who felt dismissed an opportunity to speak publicly..“A lot of people that had been injured started reaching out to our office and talking to us about how they felt they had been left behind, how nobody was listening to them,” Allison said.“I really do believe that people need permission to be able to share their stories.”Allison said the hearings are intended to be non-partisan and focused on listening rather than determining whether COVID-19 vaccines were effective across the wider population.“There’s no question that it definitely helped some people,” he said. “What I’m focused on here are those that have been injured and have not been able to get help.”He acknowledged the inquiry does not have the time or resources to conduct a broader scientific examination of Canada’s vaccine campaign or the entire government response to the pandemic.“We don’t have the resources or the time,” Allison said.“Our focus is strictly on hearing people’s stories and then potentially looking at the program that was put in place to help people who had been injured and why it hasn’t worked very well.”The federal Vaccine Impact Assistance Program provides financial support to people assessed as having suffered a serious and permanent injury caused by a Health Canada-authorized vaccine.The program, previously known as the Vaccine Injury Support Program, has been administered directly by the Public Health Agency of Canada since April.Medical experts assess whether there is a probable causal relationship between a vaccine and an applicant’s condition. The federal government says serious vaccine side effects are rare and warns that reports of medical events following vaccination do not necessarily mean the vaccine caused them.Allison said he believes the government should undertake a much wider examination of lockdowns, mandates and other measures imposed during the pandemic.“Lockdowns were horrific. They were terrible then, and I believe they’re terrible now,” he said.He pointed to closed businesses, isolation, restricted travel and families prevented from gathering for funerals as consequences that deserve further examination.“When you take measures that are restrictive of people’s liberties, why would you not review what you did?” Allison said.“Why would you not analyze what you did and determine whether it was the right thing, whether you could have done it better?”Allison said he did not receive a COVID-19 vaccine but insisted his decision to organize the hearings was not about his personal vaccination status.“At the end of the day, what I can do in my job as a member of Parliament is listen to people’s stories and fight for programs that are important to them,” he said..Republican U.S. Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin also appeared during Tuesday’s proceedings to discuss his work examining COVID-19 vaccine policy in the United States.Johnson chairs the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and has used committee hearings to challenge federal health agencies over vaccine safety data and the treatment of people reporting adverse reactions.Organizers said his testimony was intended to provide an international perspective alongside the accounts of Canadian witnesses.The Allison Inquiry continues daily through Friday at the Wellington Building in Ottawa.
