Vaccine-injured mom names Trudeau and Tam in bombshell Ottawa testimony
At the Allison Inquiry's opening day, Carrie Sakamoto shared how the "safe and effective" narrative surrounding COVID vaccines destroyed her family and her finances and shared why she still believes accountability is within reach.
Day one of the Allison Inquiry wrapped Tuesday with a husband's raw, unscripted testimony about watching his wife's health and his family's finances collapse in the wake of Canada's COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
Carrie Sakamoto sat with me afterward, reeling with the aftermath of a severe vaccine reaction. She's one of thousands of Canadians who trusted the government mantra of "safe and effective,” only to end up injured, indebted, and largely ignored.
Sakamoto is part of a class-action lawsuit filed in Alberta, naming former chief public health officer Theresa Tam and former prime minister Justin Trudeau directly. She wouldn't get into specifics as the litigation is ongoing, but she was clear about who she believes bears responsibility for a policy that offered no room for individual medical history, no informed consent, and no accountability when it went wrong.
The financial toll has been brutal. Sakamoto and her husband financed their trip to Ottawa on borrowed credit, a detail her husband didn't shy away from sharing publicly. That's the kind of sacrifice these families are making just to be heard.
And yet Sakamoto insists it was worth it.
"There's a lot of people that are injured that don't know about groups like CANRISE 19," she told me. That’s the vaccine-injured advocacy organization where she chairs community outreach, having fielded requests from thousands of Canadians looking for guidance, or just someone who understands.
Tuesday's session also delivered a rare moment of candor from sitting members of Parliament, with MPs Stephen Ellis and Mike Dawson both disclosing personal or family experiences with vaccine injury — testimony that suggests the scope of harm reaches further into Ottawa's own halls than most Canadians realize.
To critics who dismiss inquiries like this as fringe theatre, Sakamoto had a simple answer: "Unless it happens to you, or someone you love, you don't understand." She admits she once believed the same government messaging that ultimately harmed her. Her hope now is that transparency becomes standard practice going forward, so no one else has to learn the hard way, as they did during the injection rollout.
Five years after the first injuries began mounting, Sakamoto says she's finally starting to feel the ground shift. "I'm hopeful that there's going to be some change."
