I had a gut reaction when reading this headline. The covid conspiracy crowd has often abused injury program forms and statistics to create disinformation, and that is a part of this story, but there’s more to this story than just that.

Summary:

A five-month-long Global News investigation of the Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP), involving more than 30 interviews with current and former Oxaro employees, injured claimants and their attorneys, uncovered allegations that the company was unequipped to deliver fully on the program’s mission, questions about why the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) chose this company over others, and internal documents that suggest poor planning from the start.

Other excerpts are copied below, please see the original article in case I introduced any biases while picking out excerpts:

The federal government has launched a compliance audit to determine if an Ottawa consulting company is mismanaging the Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP), and Public Health Agency of Canada officials made a surprise visit to the firm’s offices in mid-June, Global News reported on July 3.

There have been 11,702 reports of serious adverse events following a COVID-19 vaccination, according to Health Canada.

That’s equal to 0.011 per cent of the 105,015,456 doses administered as of December 2023.

Note the “per cent”. So that is 11702/105015456 = 0.0001114...

“The government stepped in and gave Canadians an assurance that any injuries or death, as a matter of fact, that were caused by the vaccines would be fully compensated by a program that was accessible. I would say that the program that the Liberal government did finally implement is failing Canadians utterly,” said interim NDP Leader Don Davies.

Then-prime minister Justin Trudeau announced the Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP) in December 2020.

The effort, which began six months later, aimed to support people who have been seriously and permanently injured by any Health Canada-authorized vaccine administered in the country on or after Dec. 8, 2020.

Approved claimants could receive lump sum injury or death payouts, ongoing income replacement, and reimbursement of medical expenses.

But instead of the government operating VISP, as is done with similar programs in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, Canada elected to outsource the work.

In March 2021, the government hired Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton Consulting Inc. — now called Oxaro Inc. — to administer the program.

The challenges began soon after it launched.

In response to a 15-page list of questions, the company said, “The VISP is a new and demand-based program with an unknown and fluctuating number of applications and appeals submitted by claimants.”

“The program processes, procedures and staffing were adapted to face the challenges linked to receiving substantially more applications than originally planned,” Oxaro added.

“Timelines for a determination of eligibility and support will depend on the nature and complexity of the claim. All claims will be individually assessed by medical experts. The process will include a review of all required and relevant medical documentation, as well as current medical evidence, to determine if there is a probable link between the injury and the vaccine.”

[Kerry] Bowman [(bioethicist at the University of Toronto)] said the situation would only make vaccine hesitancy worse.

“The public will see, not only are some people pushing back on vaccines, but even if something goes wrong, you’re not going to get support I would argue that it’s going to feed into growing trends of vaccine hesitancy. That’s very problematic for all of us,” he said.

Both Strauss and Davies drew comparisons to the ArriveCan app program, which has faced scrutiny over the costs and contracting for the pandemic-era app.

Davies also cited the ArriveCan app as an example of what he described as a larger problem.

“I think this is part of a much broader problem that we’ve seen with the Liberal government over the last decade, really, which is an explosion in the use of outside consultants,” he said.

“I’d like to see the ministry take over this program. They’re at least accountable directly to the minister and to taxpayers. If the outside consultants can’t do it properly, it should be done by public servants who are in the ministry of health.”