Canada’s Own Frontline Doctors: Ira Bernstein and the Canadian Covid Care Alliance

May 2021

A guest on an MP’s show, and a new alliance

Conservative MP Dean Allison’s website announced Bernstein as a guest on his programme, billed to speak about the silencing of doctors. Around the same time, according to Wikipedia’s account, Bernstein co-founded the Canadian Covid Care Alliance (CCCA) with Jennifer Hibberd, a dentist, and David Ross, an accountant. The group promoted ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment.

Sources: deanallison.ca, 13 May 2021; Wikipedia, “COVID-19 misinformation in Canada.” Allison later chaired the 2026 hearings covered on our Allison Inquiry page.

November 2021

A telehealth company to prescribe ivermectin

In a speech posted to Rumble at the end of November 2021, Bernstein announced a telehealth service, Canadian Covid TeleHealth Inc., to provide COVID-19 care and prescribe ivermectin, to applause from the room. He acknowledged that Health Canada did not approve and said, “We are going against the regulators.” He dismissed Health Canada’s warning as not based on credible science. The company had been incorporated in August 2021.

Sources: Toronto Star, 27 and 28 January 2022; CPSO ICRC decision summary (the announcement was one of the things that triggered the investigation); Wikipedia, “COVID-19 misinformation in Canada.”

3 January 2022

“More Harm Than Good”

The CCCA released a 40-minute video presentation, The Pfizer Inoculations for COVID-19 – More Harm Than Good, on Rumble. AFP Fact Check debunked five of its claims. Counts of its reach vary by date and source: Wikipedia gives more than 800,000 views, and the Toronto Star reported 1.8 million by late January 2022.

Sources: Wikipedia, “COVID-19 misinformation in Canada,” citing AFP Fact Check; Toronto Star, 27 January 2022.

December 2021 – 27 January 2022

The Toronto Star buys ivermectin through the network

After a months-long investigation, the Star reported that it had obtained ivermectin through Canadian Covid TeleHealth under an alias. A reporter emailed an address on the CCCA website, paid a $50 membership fee, and signed a waiver agreeing to keep all the service’s providers confidential. Posing as an unvaccinated 32-year-old woman from Toronto, she booked a $149 “preventative consultation.”

Just before Christmas, a 12-minute phone appointment with Dr. Vinod Nair, an Owen Sound anesthesiologist, ended in an ivermectin prescription for prevention, at doses well above the standard one-off dose for river blindness. Nair called the drug very safe. Before hanging up he asked her to black out the drug names and his name on the bottles and paperwork before throwing them away, because the service was trying to keep it “under the radar.” A pharmacy in Tecumseh, Ontario couriered 28 pills for $155; the total came to more than $350. The leaflet with the pills said ivermectin was not recommended for COVID-19 outside a study.

Nair did not respond to the Star. His lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter, saying among other things that Ontario physicians had not been prohibited from prescribing ivermectin and that Nair was a fee-for-service physician with no financial interest in the company. In a joint email, the company’s directors and Bernstein said their practitioners had helped hundreds of patients obtain prophylaxis and treatment, ivermectin among them. A CCCA director told the Star the alliance had about 1,400 members, whose identities it keeps confidential.

Source: Toronto Star, “A covert network of Canadian doctors is prescribing ivermectin to treat COVID. Here’s how we got some,” 27 January 2022. For what the College later did about Dr. Nair, see April 2023.

27 January 2022

Who ran the company

Global News reported that the telehealth company’s directors were Dr. Patrick Phillips, whose licence the CPSO had restricted in September 2021 to bar him from prescribing ivermectin for COVID-19; Edward Leyton, a psychotherapist; and David Ross, the CCCA’s president. Both the CCCA’s listed address and the company’s registered address matched Bernstein’s medical practice. Booking was available only through the CCCA newsletter and website. The price list: $149 for “COVID prevention,” $199 for early treatment, $399 for a complex consultation.

The episode exposed a gap in regulation. The CPSO said it oversees individual physicians, not companies, and could not investigate the business. The Ontario Ministry of Health replied that physicians remain accountable to the College whatever company they work for.

Source: Global News, “COVID-19: Ontario doctor banned from prescribing ivermectin now director of company offering drug,” 27 January 2022.

28 January 2022

Under investigation

The CPSO confirmed that Bernstein was under investigation. The same week it suspended Dr. Christopher Hassell, a co-founder with Phillips of Angel’s Heart Medical, and restricted Dr. Akbar Khan, co-founder of Medicor Cancer Centres, from prescribing ivermectin and issuing vaccine exemptions. Khan’s licence was later revoked over his cancer care; see our page on the DCA tribunal case. By then the College was investigating more than 40 Ontario physicians for alleged COVID-related misconduct and had restricted or suspended eight.

Sources: Global News, “Action launched against 3 more Toronto doctors for COVID-19 misconduct,” 28 January 2022; Toronto Star, “Toronto physician, co-founder of Canadian Covid Care Alliance, under investigation by medical regulator,” 28 January 2022.

3 May 2022

A director of the company is suspended

The CPSO suspended Dr. Patrick Phillips, one of the telehealth company’s three directors, under an interim order, and referred allegations against him to the discipline tribunal. They included inappropriate prescribing and medical exemptions related to COVID-19, interfering with COVID-19 testing of an infant who was not his patient, and unprofessional conduct at his hospital. The College also referred new allegations against Hassell. These were allegations at the time of reporting; this page does not record the tribunals’ outcomes.

Source: Toronto Star, “Ontario doctor accused of ‘disgraceful’ COVID conduct has been suspended,” 3 May 2022.

25 May 2022

A restricted certificate, by his own undertaking

His registration was transferred to a restricted certificate, with terms and conditions recorded as imposed “by Member,” meaning by his own undertaking rather than by order. The terms were amended in August 2023.

Source: CPSO register, registration history.

June 2022 – April 2023

The prescribing doctor: restricted to anaesthesia, barred from ivermectin

Dr. Vinod Kunhiraman Nair (CPSO #70381), the anesthesiologist who wrote the Star’s prescription, has held a restricted certificate since 20 June 2022, first by undertaking that month and again on 8 April 2023. The College investigated whether he had engaged in professional misconduct or was incompetent in his practice and conduct, “including in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and his prescribing of Ivermectin for COVID-19.”

Under his April 2023 undertaking he must restrict his practice to anaesthesiology and must not prescribe ivermectin. He must post a notice saying so in every waiting, examination and consulting room where he practises, display it at the start of any virtual visit, and read it aloud at the start of any telephone visit. He undertook courses in medical record-keeping and in ethics and boundaries, and the College also delivered a caution in person, posted on 3 April 2023. The restrictions are still in effect today. There have been no tribunal proceedings.

His listed practice locations now include dental and oral-surgery clinics across southwestern Ontario, among them clinics in Waterloo and Kitchener, where the notice must be posted.

Source: CPSO public register entry for Dr. Vinod Kunhiraman Nair, CPSO #70381, printed 18 October 2026.

8 August 2023

What the College found

The investigation had three triggers: the telehealth announcement, a report that he was issuing COVID-19 vaccine exemptions from his office and encouraging other doctors to do the same, and videos and an article describing him prescribing ivermectin.

An independent family medicine assessor reviewed his COVID-19 care and found that he prescribed ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 and wrote vaccine exemption letters for patients who did not meet the Ministry of Health’s criteria. The assessor concluded that he did not meet the standard of practice, showed a lack of knowledge, skill and judgment, and that his practice was likely to expose patients to harm: from ivermectin’s side effects, from false reassurance, and from a higher risk of severe COVID-19 after inappropriate exemption advice. The committee accepted that opinion in full.

The committee was also concerned that he used his authority as a physician in public appearances to undermine public health guidance and dissuade people from vaccination. It found he had used an electronic records provider that did not meet the College’s requirement that records be accessible for regulatory investigations.

The outcome: a caution in person, on maintaining public trust, following public health and College guidance, keeping his public communications appropriate, and his records systems; and an undertaking with practice restrictions and education on, among other things, how health misinformation spreads. The committee noted his cooperation and his willingness to accept remediation.

Source: CPSO, Summary of the Decision of the Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committee, Dr. Ira Paul Bernstein, meeting of 8 August 2023.

17 July 2024

Back to an unrestricted licence

He was issued a new independent practice certificate. Nothing on the register today restricts his prescribing.

Source: CPSO register, registration history.