Canada’s Coercive COVID-19 Mandates a ‘Tragic Error’: Former Ontario Chief Medical Officer

Panelists at "A Citizens' Hearing," an independent inquiry of Canada's pandemic response, listen to a cross-partisan roundtable, in Toronto on June 24, 2022. (L–R) Former Reform Party leader and MP Preston Manning, retired Ontario pediatrician Dr. Susan Natsheh, and David Ross, president of the Canadian COVID Care Alliance. Andrew Chen/The Epoch Times

Canada’s public health agency made a “tragic error” by grounding its COVID-19 response policies on coercion rather than persuasion, which was a key medical principle that had been thrown away during the pandemic, according to Dr. Richard Schabas, a former Ontario chief medical officer of health.

Schabas, who served as Ontario’s top doctor from 1987 to 1997, said on June 24 that the public health principle that he practiced for decades was “based on persuasion, not coercion,” and would hardly resort to legal powers in medical interventions.