Conservative MP Dr. Matt Strauss (Kitchener South-Hespeler, ON), on Monday told the Commons in his maiden speech that COVID-19 mandates amounted to “full Communism.” Strauss, an emergency care doctor, was an outspoken critic of pandemic controls during the COVID-19 era, per Blacklock’s Reporter. “The zenith of all this top-down control came during the pandemic,” said Strauss.“The members opposite went full Communism.”“They locked Canadians down in their homes, ruined weddings, funerals, Easters, proms and Christmases, closed the borders, kept mothers from children and brothers from sisters, deprived the House of its ancient rights, spent $600 billion of taxpayer money with no budget and doubled our national debt to pay healthy 16-year-olds to sit in their basement.”“They did all this in the name of crisis management. Physicians, professors and journalists who spoke out against these abuses were hunted down. They had their licenses and their jobs threatened. I know this because it happened to me.”.Strauss at the outbreak of the pandemic was an assistant professor at Queen’s University’s medical faculty. He subsequently filed a $600,000 claim against the University alleging he was dismissed for public criticism of COVID-19 mandates.“At Queen’s University where I taught, Jane Philpott herself, one of the only two cabinet ministers to speak truth to Justin Trudeau’s power, informed me in her dean’s office that ‘the reason the administration had to harass me was that I criticized the government,’” he told the Commons.“That is a direct quote. Of course, Prime Minister Trudeau and his commissars were immune from all of this.”“They gave luxurious contracts to their friends in academia to promote their misinformation and gave hundreds of millions of dollars to mainstream media to promote government narratives. These three institutions – government, media and academia – have important roles in society to regulate each other.”“When ordinary, everyday Canadians came here to Ottawa complaining that their Charter rights to bodily autonomy, assembly and free movement were being violated, every member of the Liberal caucus voted to trample their rights further.”Strauss during the pandemic was appointed acting medical officer of health in Haldimand-Norfolk, ON. He set out to “save as many lives as possible” without resorting to mandates, Strauss later wrote in a 2023 National Post commentary.“COVID mortality declined during my tenure,” wrote Strauss at the time.“I did not impose additional mask mandates, vaccine mandates, capacity restrictions or contact tracing schemes as many of my colleagues in other jurisdictions did. I did not harangue patients into getting low-risk toddlers vaccinated, in keeping with the National Advisory Council on Immunization guidelines. Conversely I went to great lengths to counsel high-risk individuals to get vaccinated, to refer COVID cases to the regional monoclonal antibody clinic and to get Paxlovid available in our community.”.Strauss won his riding by 1,028 votes over incumbent Liberal MP Valerie Bradford, former chair of the Commons Science Committee. He attributed his victory in part to the émigré community, noting his own maternal grandfather was a Cold War refugee from the Soviet bloc.“Repackaging of the Liberals’ socialist plans in banker’s socks might fool some of the people some of the time, but it is not fooling the multicultural communities in Kitchener South-Hespeler: The Romanians, Albanians, Polish, Ukrainians, Serbians, Croatians, Lithuanians, Venezuelans, Chinese, Somalis and Ethiopians with lived experience of socialism and know what they are seeing, do not like it and sent me here,” said Strauss.“If we cannot speak truth to the Liberals’ power everything will continue to break.”“That is why I had to come here. I refuse to be a cog in their broken machine.”
