Class-Action Lawsuit Launched Against Federal, Alberta Governments for COVID Vaccine Injuries

A vial of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is seen at an Alberta Health Services vaccination clinic in Didsbury, Alta., on June 29, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh)

A class-action lawsuit is being launched against the Alberta and federal governments on behalf of Albertans who say they were harmed by COVID-19 vaccines.

“I think Canadians will be shocked to learn about the rushed changes to safety standards for the Covid Vaccines which removed the requirement for the Covid Vaccines to be either ’safe or effective,'” said Jeffrey Rath, lead counsel on the case, in a Feb. 29 press release.

Mr. Rath added that the defendants used “coercion” to make the public take the vaccines, including “by stripping rights from them.”

The lawsuit is centred around allegations that the federal and Alberta governments used “unlawful, negligent, inadequate, improper, unfair, and deceptive practices” in the “warning, marketing, promotion, and distribution” of the vaccines.

According to the press release, the lawsuit claims that the defendants “provided information they knew to be false and incomplete.”

The press release also says the plaintiffs accuse the defendants of having censored and suppressed “truthful and reliable information about vaccine injuries,” which violated the medical principle of informed consent.

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Additionally, the lawsuit alleges that the defendants engaged in “misfeasance in public office and conspiracy to commit assault and battery on the public.”

The class representative for the lawsuit is Carrie Sakamoto, a mother from Lethbridge. Ms. Sakamoto claims that she sustained “severe, permanent physical and emotional injuries and damages” from the vaccines. The lawsuit seeks to represent all impacted individuals in Alberta who have been “injured or otherwise adversely affected” by the COVID vaccines.

Health Canada has repeatedly said the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines continue to outweigh the risks of the disease, with serious reactions following vaccination being “rare.”

Eva Chipiuk, co-counsel for the case, pointed out that the federal government has already told the House Public Accounts Committee that the contracts with the manufacturers “were rushed, didn’t contain the normal standards, and provided additional indemnities in favour of the manufacturers.”

She was referring to the committee’s Feb. 13, 2023, meeting, where Liberal MP Anthony Housefather said the agreements were signed at the beginning of the pandemic, “when everybody was desperate for vaccines.”

“Companies were being told to rush vaccine production and do testing in an unprecedented way,” he said.

“They did it all in less than year” and were thus exposed to much higher liability, “because they didn’t do the type of testing that normally means these drugs take years to come to market,” he added.

He said it was for this reason that the companies “wanted to have different conditions” in their contracts.

Ms. Chipiuk said the government gave the public medical advice on the vaccines knowing people were vulnerable and afraid. “They knew or ought to have known that the public would be relying on their information for their health, safety, and protection,” she told The Epoch Times.

Back in July 2023, an Alberta court ruled that the provincial cabinet violated Alberta’s Public Health Act by making the final decisions on COVID-19 policies instead of allowing then-chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw to make those decisions.

Neither the federal attorney general nor the Alberta attorney general has responded to The Epoch Times’ requests for comment.

Vaccine-Related Lawsuits

Several lawsuits have been launched seeking damages related to COVID-19 vaccines and associated mandates.

In February 2022, a group that included former Newfoundland Premier Brian Peckford and People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier filed a lawsuit against the federal government for its travel restrictions on Canadians without COVID-19 vaccinations.

A Federal Court judge rejected that lawsuit in October 2022, citing “mootness,” since the mandate had already been suspended in June 2022. The Federal Court of Appeals upheld that decision a year later.

Back in May 2023, hundreds of Purolator employees who had been terminated for not being vaccinated against COVID-19 filed a lawsuit against the company. In December, an arbitrator ruled that the company had “unjustly” fired employees and ordered it to provide compensation.

Some 330 active or former members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) who said they were harmed by COVID-19 vaccine mandates filed a class-action lawsuit against high-ranking military officials in June 2023. This followed the ruling of an independent military administrative tribunal a month earlier that the CAF’s vaccine mandate violated charter rights.