Ottawa publishes its vaccine injury claim and payout numbers, and its reporting has been paused since April.
Conservative MP Dean Allison held four days of unsanctioned hearings on Parliament Hill from September 8 to 11 at which 50 witnesses described injuries they attribute to Covid vaccines, with no Health Canada testimony. On September 10 Dan Dicks posted 'there are only 2 MP's here...out of 343. Your government doesn't care about you or your struggles.' On September 11 Rebel News wrote that the hearings were 'largely ignored by legacy media outlets,' and on September 12 Henry Makow called the media's dismissal proof that it is an enemy. Their claim is that Ottawa and the legacy press do not care about vaccine-injured Canadians.
The narrow reading is that the legacy press dismissed vaccine-injured Canadians as antivaxxers and the coverage was thin. The coverage was thin, with CBC, CTV and National Post the mainstream outlets found, and the text doesn't do the dismissing. National Post's 10 September report describes an injured witness whose 'life is effectively destroyed' beside a conspiracy-minded protester and states that 'governments haven't denied that the vaccines caused health problems, but have been tepid in deciding what to do', and CBC describes the witnesses as Canadians sharing personal stories of injury. The criticism CTV carried in August, from Liberal whip Mark Gerretsen and Dr Isaac Bogoch, attacked the inquiry's design and said nothing about the witnesses.
The wide reading is that Ottawa doesn't care about the injured and buries its own numbers. The Public Health Agency of Canada's statistics page for the Vaccine Injury Support Program publishes cumulative figures through 30 November 2025, 3,557 claims received, 451 inadmissible, 252 approved and 21,474,722 dollars paid, and says reporting is paused while the program moved to PHAC as the Vaccine Impact Assistance Program on 1 April 2026, with roughly 2,000 carried-over applications under review. That's a current gap on top of a published record. A no-fault program running since June 2021, a whip whose stated position is that the injured deserve to be heard, and two Conservative MPs testifying about their own injuries don't fit a government with no working mechanism, and the empty benches are what an unsanctioned, one-party hearing in a sitting week looks like from the other parties' side.
Three checks: on whether the federal government publishes claim, approval and payout figures for its injury program, on whether mainstream coverage of the hearings characterised the witnesses as anti-vaccine or as conspiracy theorists, and on whether the government has a working mechanism for the injured and members willing to engage them.
Being right about what happened and wrong about what it proves are different failures, so these two lines never get averaged into one score. How this works
The logic check
If the claim is right, these things should be true. Here's what we found. Each check says which version of the claim it's testing, the plain one most people would hear or the widest one the same words could carry, and whether it carries the claim's own burden or establishes the background it sits on.
If Ottawa were burying its own vaccine injury numbers, the strongest reading, the federal government would publish no claim, approval or payout figures for its injury program and the figures would have to be forced out.
Reading strainedThe Public Health Agency of Canada's statistics page for the Vaccine Injury Support Program publishes cumulative figures through November 30, 2025: 3,557 claims received, 451 inadmissible, 252 approved by the Medical Review Board, and 21,474,722 dollars paid. The same page says reporting is paused while the program moved to PHAC as the Vaccine Impact Assistance Program on April 1, 2026, with updated statistics promised in the coming months and roughly 2,000 carried-over applications under review, so there is a current reporting gap on top of a published historical record. source
If the legacy press dismissed vaccine-injured Canadians as antivaxxers, the minimal reading, mainstream coverage of the hearings would characterize the witnesses as anti-vaccine or as conspiracy theorists rather than as injured people.
Reading strainedNational Post's September 10 report, published mid-hearing, describes 'twin faces' of the fight, an injured witness whose 'life is effectively destroyed' set beside a conspiracy-minded protester, and states that 'governments haven't denied that the vaccines caused health problems, but have been tepid in deciding what to do.' CBC's September 11 report describes the witnesses as Canadians who came to share personal stories of injury and notes the inquiry is unsanctioned and heard no Health Canada testimony. The criticism CTV carried in August came from Liberal whip Mark Gerretsen and Dr Isaac Bogoch and attacked the inquiry's design, 'it's really billed as being nonpartisan, but all of his preamble to setting the stage for this is very partisan,' with no characterization of the witnesses as antivaxxers. The volume was thin: CBC, CTV and National Post are the mainstream outlets found, and Allison told Rebel a CBC reporter asked one question and left. source
If 'your government doesn't care about you or your struggles' were true as a character claim, the strongest reading, the federal government would have no working mechanism for the injured at all and its members would refuse to engage them.
Reading failsThe federal government has run a no-fault injury program since June 2021 that had approved 252 claims and paid more than 21 million dollars by late 2025, took its administration in-house at PHAC in April 2026 after reporting on the contractor's costs, and the government whip's stated position in August was that the injured deserve to be heard while the inquiry's design is partisan. Two sitting Conservative MPs, Mike Dawson and Chris Lewis, testified on day one about their own injuries, and the benches were otherwise nearly empty across four days with no Liberal, Bloc or NDP member reported present. source
The full scoring
The raw numbers behind the verdict. What R/I/P/E/L and charge stages mean: how we score.
Research verdict: mixed evidence. The research found some of what the claim predicts and not the rest.
The claim is that the MP benches and thin legacy coverage at the Allison Inquiry show that Ottawa and the legacy press do not care about vaccine-injured Canadians, dismiss them as antivaxxers, and bury the country's own vaccine injury numbers. The Public Health Agency of Canada publishes 3,557 claims received, 252 approved and 21,474,722 dollars paid through November 30, 2025, with reporting paused since the program moved in April. Coverage from National Post and CBC was thin and described the witnesses as injured people. A no-fault program that has paid more than 21 million dollars doesn't fit a government that doesn't care. Thin coverage and a late update have support; indifference and concealment don't.
Source record: hobocode.net Fault Line Report 2026-W37
Everything here is a plain-language cut of research published in full at hobocode.net, including the polarization methodology that defines every score on this page.