Ontario doctor survives regulatory turmoil after questioning risk-benefit of COVID vaccines
Doctor Jean-Marc Benoit has been vindicated by his regulatory body after it withdrew allegations against him based on his social media posts during the peak of COVID-19 hysteria.
Ontario physician Jean-Marc Benoit remains with his license to practice medicine intact following an investigation launched against him by his college, stemming from 2021 allegations.
The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) began investigating Dr. Benoit and his practice shortly after he appeared on Rebel News in May 2021.
During that time, Dr. Benoit was simply asking government officials for the data behind the authorization of the novel COVID-19 injections for children, and sharing his concerns over whether the risk really outweighed the theorized benefit.
Dr. Benoit is walking away from the investigation mostly scot free, unlike many Ontario physicians who retired early, left the province, or had their licenses revoked by the CPSO throughout the COVID hysteria.
Benoit says things look better in 2024 than they did when we first spoke back in May 2021.
“The concern that we both had was regarding the COVID vaccines for children,” he recalls, “and the fact that there wasn't a whole lot of information out there to assuage concerns that maybe they weren't fully researched, maybe they weren't fully established as being safe.”
Despite much public support for the types of questions and concerns Dr. Benoit was expressing at the time, like whether risk outweighed the benefit for the still-in-clinical trial COVID-19 injections being authorized for children, the investigation by the CPSO weighed heavily on his mind.
“This is Canada, and you're allowed to express your opinion,” he thought. And while this is mostly true, he acknowledges “you also have to assume the consequences of what you say.”
As a result of expressing his opinion, including his expert medical opinion providing a COVID-19 vaccine exemption to a mother wanting to hold off on vaccination for her child, Dr. Benoit had a second investigation launched against him by the CPSO.
The discipline he received a from the CPSO was for not responding to licensing body in a timely manner along with $6,000 fine. His licence to practice remains intact.
“I think some of my colleagues decided that this was a hill worth dying on from a professional standpoint,” Dr. Benoit says about the differences in how other physicians were treated. “They might help the world more taking a public advocacy role than being in a clinic and seeing one person after the next… in some other cases, I think that freedom of speech was made into the defining issue.”
Dr. Benoit acknowledges the “police-like” role of the CPSO in the medical profession. He says that while they should not be obstructed in investigations, the College did seem to be on more of a witch hunt than an impartial agent of justice throughout the COVID-19 panic.
Since the pandemic, Dr. Benoit says that the CPSO is slowly returning to normal and that includes finally letting members of the public back into council meetings and putting faces to names during proceedings.
One thing that he says is a hang up, that hasn’t quite garnered a full resumption of normal, are lingering vaccine mandates which prevent him from returning to his hospital duties. Even though it’s since been recognized that the majority of health-care workers complied with mandates due to financial coercion.
The public shares similar sentiments now, with a mere 15% of the population COVID-19 vaccinated according to current government recommendations.
Overall, the process was costly and time consuming, not covered by doctors’ member fee-funded Canadian Medical Protective Association.
Dr. Benoit’s success was thanks to his lawyer, Lisa Bildly, who was crowdfunded by The Democracy Fund, a registered Canadian civil liberties charity.
Don't Get Censored
Big Tech is censoring us. Sign up so we can always stay in touch.