For two years, Canadians were told the COVID-19 vaccines were safe and effective. Those who said otherwise were called antivaxxers and conspiracy theorists.

Now, starting September 8, some of the Canadians who paid the price for that slogan will give sworn testimony at the Allison Inquiry — four days of hearings chaired by Conservative MP Dean Allison, organized by lawyer Shawn Buckley, and built entirely on volunteer labour.

Allison and Buckley joined Sheila Gunn Reid and Tamara Ugolini on Thursday's Rebel Roundup.

The response to the Allison inquiry has been overwhelming, with more than 1,400 Canadians applying to testify, and a team of doctors reviewing applications to assess vaccine injuries.

Buckley said two witnesses have dropped out in the days before the hearing; one medically unable to travel and another who is struggling with what Buckley described as something beyond PTSD.

"To say that they have post-traumatic stress disorder might be an understatement," he said. "They've also been injured by the way they've been treated." 

When Buckley interviews potential witnesses and asks what the hardest part has been, he said the answer almost never starts with the physical injury.

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"I'm expecting — well, it's that I lost my kidneys and I'm waiting on dialysis," he said. "Or I was just about to get married and now I'm in a wheelchair with two feeding tubes. And almost invariably that's not the response." 

What witnesses describe instead is years of being dismissed, of being told their injuries were in their heads, of watching specialists refuse to treat them because vaccine injury officially does not exist in Canada. "No one wants to touch you," Buckley said, "because it's not real."

Allison said approximately a dozen fellow MPs are expected to attend at various points across the four days — some staying for multiple days, others dropping in for a morning session. Importantly, he said there is not an MP on Parliament Hill who does not know the inquiry is happening. 

"There's been a cone of silence for so long," the Niagara West Conservative MP said. "People can't have a conversation with an MP, with a family member, with a doctor. How do you ever fix the problem? How do you ever get treatment?"

He also credited Tamara Ugolini's access to information investigation into Canada's vaccine injury support program — noting he had been citing Global News on the file before realizing the original investigative work had been done by Rebel.

Tamara's reporting showed that the majority of the tens of millions of dollars budgeted for the program went to the consultancy firm administering it, which took nearly three years to figure out how to run a program with only a five-year mandate. The program has since been taken over by the Public Health Agency of Canada — the same agency that oversaw vaccine procurement and endorsement — and renamed the Vaccine Impact Assistance Program.

The backlog and the waiting families remain.

Allison said the inquiry's goal is not just testimony but permission: giving injured Canadians licence to speak publicly about something the system has told them is not real.

"One of the biggest goals I've had is really giving people permission to speak publicly about this issue," Allison said. "We need courage in every walk of life — politicians, the general public, doctors — to come forward and say: we know for a fact the reality on the ground is that we're seeing it."

The Allison Inquiry runs September 8 through 11.

Rebel Roundup airs Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 11 a.m. MT / 1 p.m. ET.