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Imported experts: the Americans at the Allison Inquiry, and the MPs who sat with them

Four days of sworn testimony on Parliament Hill gave the platform's longest turn to a U.S. senator, and its expert slot to two American physicians with public records of discredited claims. Canadian MPs listened, and no one was called to answer them.

Terry Polevoy, MD, FRCPC  |  September 2026

What the inquiry was. Conservative MP Dean Allison (Niagara West) chaired four days of hearings, 8–11 September 2026, in the Wellington Building on Parliament Hill, livestreamed. Inquiry counsel was Shawn Buckley, who was also lead counsel for the 2023 National Citizens Inquiry. Organizers report about 50 witnesses selected from more than 1,400 applicants, with the not-for-profit Covid Testimony Association running the process on public donations. Donors have not been disclosed.

The inquiry's own terms of reference describe a neutral forum for personal experience that does not make findings of fact. It was not sanctioned by Parliament or the government and had no power to compel witnesses.

What this page is not about. Most of the people who testified were Canadians describing illness, disability or bereavement. Some vaccine injuries are real and recognized, and Canada's compensation program has been widely criticized for delay. Nothing here questions any individual's account of their own health. This page examines the three American witnesses brought in as authorities, and the elected officials who lent the proceedings the setting of Parliament.

Why the Americans matter

The three U.S. participants were Senator Ron Johnson, cardiologist Peter McCullough, and obstetrician James Thorp. The Canadian expert witnesses (Denis Rancourt, Charles Hoffe, Jessica Rose and others) deserve their own treatment and are not covered here.

The Americans matter for a specific reason. The inquiry's purpose was to hear Canadians, but its framework for explaining what those Canadians experienced was largely imported: U.S. passive-surveillance data (VAERS), U.S. Senate investigations, and U.S. professional disputes. Johnson alone appears in 58 indexed segments across the first two days, more than any witness and second only to the chair and inquiry counsel.

About the timestamps below. They come from an independent, unofficial index of the four days (allison-inquiry.pages.dev) that links each segment to the organizers' Rumble video. The segment titles are the index's summaries, not verbatim quotes. Anyone citing a specific statement should confirm it against the video at the linked time.

Senator Ron Johnson (R–Wisconsin)

First witness, Day 1. Chair of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Selected segments from the record:

The record. Johnson's central method has been the same since 2021: treat raw VAERS death reports as evidence that vaccines caused the deaths. In 2021 the Washington Post Fact Checker gave his "campaign of vaccine misinformation" Four Pinocchios, and CNN and the Seattle Times each fact-checked his VAERS death counts. The CDC's position throughout was that review of death certificates, autopsies and medical records had not established a causal link for those reports. VAERS accepts reports from anyone, does not verify them, and under the emergency authorization U.S. providers were required to report any death after vaccination regardless of cause.

The method escalated in May 2026. After releasing his subcommittee report Unmasked, Johnson took a worldwide VAERS total of about 39,000 death reports and multiplied it by 100 to arrive at "3.9 million" possible American deaths. Beyond the causation problem, the starting number was a global figure presented as a U.S. one.

His 2021 record also includes promoting hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin (YouTube suspended his uploads for a week) and telling a town hall that ordinary mouthwash had been "proven to kill the coronavirus."

Six days after testifying in Ottawa, on 17 September, he accepted Children's Health Defense's Defender Award at its Washington conference, where Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave the keynote. See the RFK Jr. vaccine record.

The Canadian problem. A sitting foreign legislator was sworn in as the opening witness at a proceeding held on Parliament Hill and spent part of his time advising Canadians on how to rein in their own provincial medical regulators and on Canadian convoy prosecutions. Canada does not use VAERS. Its own surveillance runs through CAEFISS and the provinces, and none of that data was presented by anyone accountable for it.

Dr. Peter McCullough

Expert witness (physician), Day 4. Texas cardiologist.

Selected segments from the record:

The record. The American Board of Internal Medicine recommended in October 2022 that McCullough's certifications be revoked for providing false or inaccurate medical information to the public, and by January 2025 both his internal medicine and cardiovascular disease certifications were listed as revoked. Board certification is separate from a licence to practise, but it is the profession's own judgment on competence.

His published record on these vaccines has not held up. His 2021 VAERS myocarditis paper in Current Problems in Cardiology was retracted. A 2024 review in Cureus, on which he was senior author, was retracted within weeks of publication. SSRN, the preprint host for The Lancet, removed a paper by him and colleagues claiming large numbers of vaccine deaths. He was also removed as editor-in-chief of two cardiology journals in 2022, and Baylor Scott & White sued him over continuing to claim an affiliation after his employment ended.

The protocol. Telling injured Canadians, from a Parliament Hill witness chair, that a supplement stack will clear spike protein is a treatment recommendation without a trial behind it. No controlled study shows nattokinase, bromelain and curcumin remove spike protein or reverse vaccine injury. Nattokinase has fibrinolytic activity, which is a concern for anyone on anticoagulants or antiplatelet drugs, a group that includes many of the cardiac and clotting patients the inquiry heard from. The segments on paid spike antibody testing point to the familiar pairing of a test that finds a problem and a protocol that sells the answer.

Dr. James Thorp

Expert witness, Day 3. Florida obstetrician and maternal-fetal medicine specialist.

Selected segments from the record:

The miscarriage claim. The "NEJM flaws" argument is the 82% first-trimester miscarriage figure, produced by removing roughly 700 women vaccinated in the third trimester from the denominator of the Shimabukuro study. That arithmetic is dissected in full on this site: The 82% miscarriage claim.

The Canadian stillbirth claim. This is the item Canadian MPs were best placed to check and did not. In November 2021 a rumour spread that 13 vaccinated mothers had stillbirths in 24 hours at Lions Gate Hospital in North Vancouver. Vancouver Coastal Health said there was no truth to it, that the people spreading it had no affiliation with the hospital, and that there had been no notable change in stillbirths across its region during the pandemic. Its seven hospitals recorded four stillbirths between April and August 2021. CBC, CTV, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org all reported it as false. Five years later an American physician repeated it on Parliament Hill as a "cluster."

The Fresno "cluster" fared no better: Fresno County and California public health told FactCheck.org there had been no significant rise in stillbirths after vaccines were introduced. On the broader evidence, studies have found vaccination during pregnancy associated with fewer stillbirths, including an Australian cohort in which vaccinated women were about 80% less likely to have one, while COVID infection in pregnancy raises the risk of stillbirth, preterm birth and maternal death.

Science Feedback reviewed a 2023 Thorp interview and found his fertility and pregnancy claims inaccurate and his VAERS-based death estimates built on flawed reasoning. His framing is now also a book, Sacrifice: How the Deadliest Vaccine in History Targeted the Most Vulnerable.

The Conservative MPs

MPs from all parties were invited. Only Conservatives took part.

MPRole at the inquirySource
Dean Allison (Niagara West)Chair, all four daysInquiry; transcript index
Glen Motz (Medicine Hat–Cardston–Warner)Panel; sole MP on the panel for Day 4Transcript index; Rebel News
Blaine Calkins (Ponoka–Didsbury)PanelTranscript index
Chris LewisPanelTranscript index
Ted FalkPanelTranscript index
Jamil Jivani, Mike Dawson, MP EllisIn the room, Day 1; Ellis questioned JohnsonRebel News (surname only for Ellis)
Jagsharan Singh Mahal, Arnold Viersen, Kelly Block; former MP Colin CarrieListed as attendingSingle partisan source (Mark Trozzi's Substack); unconfirmed

1. The setting did the persuading

The inquiry used the vocabulary and architecture of an official proceeding: the name "Inquiry," a room in a parliamentary building, witnesses sworn under oath, a panel of MPs. It had none of the safeguards that make an official inquiry worth trusting. There was no independent commissioner, no power to compel documents, no cross-examination, and no opposing evidence. Liberal whip Mark Gerretsen made this point in August: the hearings were built on the premise of an official inquiry without being one, and were billed as non-partisan while Allison's own framing leaned on the convoy and mandates.

The terms of reference say the inquiry makes no findings of fact. The expert witnesses were not so restrained. They told the panel the vaccines cause cancer, stillbirths and most long COVID, and that Canada should pull them. The absence of findings did not stop conclusions from being presented; it only meant no one tested them.

2. One side of the evidence

Of the 65 participants in the independent index, the expert witnesses were McCullough, Thorp, Rancourt, Hoffe, Rose, Deanna McLeod, Gary Davidson, Patrick Provost and Ken Drysdale of the National Citizens Inquiry. None was called to present the regulatory, epidemiological or clinical evidence they were disputing. No one from Health Canada, PHAC, NACI, a provincial public health unit or an academic vaccine-safety group appears. MPs who sat through Thorp's Lions Gate "cluster" had a Canadian health authority's public rebuttal a single search away.

3. Allison's history on the subject

This was not a new interest. In 2021 CBC reported that Allison hosted an online show that featured vaccine skeptics, and that he was left out of Erin O'Toole's shadow cabinet when O'Toole said his picks reflected a commitment to addressing vaccine hesitancy. At the June 2026 launch Allison said he had the approval of the Conservative caucus and Pierre Poilievre. Poilievre did not attend.

4. "Turbo cancer" from a panel member

CBC reported that panel member Chris Lewis has said his mother was diagnosed with "turbo cancer" after vaccination. His family's illness is his own, and it deserves sympathy. But "turbo cancer" is not a diagnosis used in oncology. It is a term from online vaccine-skeptic circles, popularized by figures such as William Makis, whose record is covered on this site in the fenbendazole page. When a legislator adopts it and then sits on a panel hearing Johnson field a question on "turbo cancers" and McCullough describe a "cancer surge," the panel is not a neutral listener.

5. The foreign senator and the Canadian regulators

MP Ellis used his time with Johnson to ask whether Anthony Fauci had collaborated with Theresa Tam; Johnson said he would have his staff add her name to the keyword searches of the Fauci material. Johnson also took questions on how to stop Canadian colleges of physicians from disciplining doctors. Canada's colleges have real problems, several of them documented on this site in Physician self-regulation across Canada, but the fix will not come from a Wisconsin senator whose own method has been rated among the most misleading uses of vaccine data in U.S. politics.

6. The room itself

The inquiry was privately funded through the Covid Testimony Association, which has published neither donors nor totals. The room in the Wellington Building was presumably obtained through Allison's access as an MP. Whether that amounts to an in-kind public contribution to a privately funded event is a fair question for the House of Commons administration and the Board of Internal Economy.

The case the organizers make

The inquiry's defenders make several points that deserve a fair statement. Allison told the inquiry that Canada has received over 59,000 adverse-event reports, about 11,000 of them serious, and that the Vaccine Injury Support Program approved about 252 of roughly 3,500 claims and paid around $21.5 million. The program's slow start and administrative costs have drawn criticism well beyond vaccine-skeptic circles. Many witnesses said they had been dismissed by doctors and had never been heard publicly. Allison closed by saying compassion should never be controversial.

On those points there is common ground. Rare serious adverse events, including myocarditis after mRNA vaccines and clotting with the AstraZeneca vaccine, are acknowledged by Health Canada. Injured people deserve a functioning compensation system and doctors who take them seriously.

But compassion for the injured and a platform for McCullough, Thorp and Johnson are separate choices. The first did not require the second. A proceeding designed to help the injured could have paired their testimony with Canadian clinicians and the officials who run the compensation program, and asked hard questions of both. What was held instead gave its expert authority to three Americans whose central claims have been rejected by their own professional bodies, by fact-checkers, and in one case by the Canadian hospital authority whose patients they were talking about.

What to watch

Sources

  1. Allison Inquiry, official site and terms of reference: covidtestimony.com
  2. Independent transcript index with Rumble timestamps (unofficial): allison-inquiry.pages.dev, participant roles at /people/
  3. CBC News, "Conservative MP holds independent hearings into COVID-19 vaccine injuries," 11 Sep 2026: cbc.ca
  4. CBC News, Conservative infighting piece citing Chris Lewis and "turbo cancer," Sep 2026: cbc.ca
  5. CP24/CTV News, "Why one Conservative MP's push to probe COVID-19 vaccine injuries is prompting concern," 14 Aug 2026: cp24.com
  6. CBC News, 2021 shadow cabinet report on Allison and vaccine-skeptic MPs: cbc.ca/1.6242300
  7. LifeSiteNews, June 2026 launch report (Allison on caucus and Poilievre approval): lifesitenews.com
  8. Rebel News live updates, Days 1–4 (MP attendance, Ellis question, Motz on Day 4): Day 1, Day 4
  9. Interest of Justice Substack, Day 1 summary (Allison's federal figures): substack
  10. Washington Post Fact Checker, "Four Pinocchios for Ron Johnson's campaign of vaccine misinformation," July 2021: washingtonpost.com
  11. CNN, "Sen. Ron Johnson (again) misleads on vaccines and reported deaths," June 2021: cnn.com
  12. IBTimes UK, fact check of Johnson's "3.9 million" claim, May 2026: ibtimes.co.uk
  13. UpNorthNews, 2021 review of Johnson's COVID claims (mouthwash, ivermectin, YouTube suspension): upnorthnewswi.com
  14. MedPage Today / NAMD, ABIM revocation of McCullough's certifications: namd.org
  15. Retraction Watch, Cureus retraction of McCullough review, Feb 2024: retractionwatch.com
  16. Tech ARP, ABIM letter and Baylor Scott & White suit: techarp.com
  17. CBC News, "False claims of stillbirths among vaccinated mothers at B.C. hospital slammed as harmful disinformation," Nov 2021: cbc.ca
  18. PolitiFact, "Vancouver hospital did not see a surge in stillbirths," Dec 2021: politifact.com
  19. FactCheck.org, "Doctor Makes False Claim About Stillbirths in Canadian Hospitals," Dec 2021: factcheck.org
  20. FactCheck.org, "COVID-19 Vaccines Reduce, Not Increase, Risk of Stillbirth" (Fresno; Australian cohort), Nov 2022: factcheck.org
  21. Science Feedback, review of Thorp's claims, Nov 2023: science.feedback.org
  22. Mark Trozzi Substack, "Wins of the Week 142" (MP attendance list; single partisan source): drtrozzi.news