Doctors Bemoan Increased Penalization of Health Professionals Who Criticized Pandemic Measures

An adult acute care hospital in Calgary is seen on April 1, 2020. (The Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh)

Encroachment on physicians’ autonomy and erosion of their independence escalated during the pandemic, while provincial regulators have been increasingly penalizing health professionals who don’t agree with the medical authorities’ dictates, doctors said in a panel discussion.

The Oct. 5 virtual roundtable, held by Citizens’ Hearing: Examining Canada’s Covid Response, featured Dr. Richard Schabas, former chief medical officer of health in Ontario; Dr. Chris Milburn, former head of ER for the Eastern Zone of the Nova Scotia Health Authority; and Dr. Eric Payne, a pediatric neurologist and researcher who practises in Alberta.

Both Milburn and Payne have faced repercussions for questioning COVID-19 restrictions and mandatory vaccination policy.

Milburn was fired as head of emergency medicine in June 2021 after criticizing his province’s vaccination and pandemic response measures. Speaking about the impacts within the medical system, he told the panelists that the measures accelerated the gradual erosion “doctors’ independence” in the way they treat their patients that began 20-30 years ago.

“I’ve had the college suggest to me in very clear terms that I should probably shut up,” he said, referring to the regulatory college for medical doctors.

“My take on it is that medicare was doomed to be a failure because it gives centralized control to bureaucrats who do not understand how medicine works at the coalface—they don’t understand how doctors actually interact with patients, they can’t adjust to unique community needs,” Milburn said.

“That system can’t self-correct and self-adjust because you have this big government bureaucracy in the middle of all of it making all of the decisions, and making really bad decisions over and over again.”

Milburn pointed to the directives and guidelines issued by provincial Colleges of Physician and Surgeons or chief medical officers during the pandemic, saying people became increasingly reliant on following those who are deemed “experts.”

“We call the medical officer of health ’the top doctor,' which is really funny to me, because they’re generally people who’ve maybe not done well in clinical care and maybe don’t interact that well with patients on an individual level, so they end up in this job,” he said.

“It was doctors working on the front lines who’ve made decisions and looked after patients, but suddenly these people got elevated to godlike status and they told us all exactly what we had to do,” he added. “We had to vaccinate our patients, we had to put them in masks, we had to tell them to stay home. We had to tell them they were bad people unless they did all that. And most of us just fell in line.”

‘Ministry of Truth’

Payne echoed Milburn’s remarks, while calling for an end to fearmongering and penalizing physicians who dare to speak out against medical authorities.

“We’ve got to stop this fear, we’ve got to be able to talk truth without being punished for speaking,” he said, pointing to data he compiled from Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario that showed those who received three doses of COVID-19 vaccines have accounted for the most deaths in the past few months.

“Those who had received three shots were more likely to die, be hospitalized, be hospitalized in an ICU, and get COVID. Ninety percent of deaths in mid-March to the first week of April in B.C. were the triple-vaxxed,” he said.

“So that’s where we’re at right now, trying to get that message out and really trying to push back on any sort of mandate with respect to these genetic vaccines and children.”

Payne was previously threatened with being placed on unpaid leave for non-compliance with the Alberta Health Service’s mandatory vaccination order that required all staff, physicians, and volunteers to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 31, 2021.

He noted that similar encroachment on physicians’ autonomy is also seen in the United States, pointing to legislation that was signed into law by California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sept. 30, which bars physicians in the state from spreading “misinformation” or “disinformation” related to COVID-19.

According to the law, misinformation means “false information that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus contrary to the standard of care,” while disinformation means “misinformation that the licensee deliberately disseminated with malicious intent or an intent to mislead.”

Physicians who allegedly disseminate COVID-19 vaccine misinformation or disinformation during discussions with their patients directly related to COVID-19 treatment will risk losing their medical licence, the law says.

“What they’ve created in California now are doctors who are state doctors—you are now practicing on behalf of the state, you are not representing your patients,” Payne told the panel.

“They have formally created an enforceable Ministry of Truth.”