Parent Responds to The Canadian Press Article: “Experts say there may be fewer suspensions if Ontario had electronic immunization registry.”
Letter to the Editor of The Canadian Press, Andrea Baillie
April 25, 2025
Subject: The Canadian Press Article April 9/10 & its own News Principles
Dear The Canadian Press,
On April 9 and 10, 2025, CBC, Global News, Toronto Star, and Winnipeg Free Press published an article titled: Ontario schools begin suspending students who aren’t fully vaccinated; Experts say there may be fewer suspensions if Ontario had electronic immunization registry, written by Health Reporter Hannah Alberga for The Canadian Press.
This letter is in response to Ms. Alberga’s article that seems to be more of a public-private partnership propaganda piece, than a result of investigative reporting doing justice to The Canadian Press‘ own News Principles: “driven by impartiality”… pursuing “with equal vigor all sides of a story”… focusing “on real people, not just institutions, and showing in human terms how events affect lives.” Ontario’s Immunization School Pupils Act (ISPA), the basis for the suspension alluded to in the article, is ONLY about collecting vaccination records, but is (ab)used to ‘nudge’ Ontario parents to get them to vaccinate their children against nine ‘designated diseases’.
The title of The Canadian Press article is misleading to begin with, the tone is set: vaccinate your child, if not, your child will be suspended from school. The article ends with “Get your vaccine and then report it to us.” It makes readers who do not take the time to read through the whole article, believe that vaccines are mandatory in Ontario in order to be able to attend school. But, vaccines are NOT mandatory for school attendance, not in Ontario, nowhere in Canada. Moreover, your article advertises a private company-owned Immunization Tracker App, CanImmunize, that is developed with public tax money. Does The Canadian Press bend to the will of government and private sector interests, or is it truly “Canada’s independent national news agency?”
The article fails to inform readers in depth about ISPA. It does not address the fact that ISPA’s tool of suspension is not in sync with the conditions for suspensions laid out in Ontario’s Education Act. It does not address the fact that ISPA’s suspension is a tool of coercion in the eyes of Ontario’s Personal Health Information Act. Where are the different sides of the story, where are the ‘real people,’ where is the story how (threatening) suspension adversely affects lives of parents and children, misled, bullied and intimidated by Public Health (units) and collaborating schools, school boards and superintendents?
Exemption
The Canadian Press article fleetingly mentions the possibility of “completing a valid exemption” to avoid suspension. How many readers know what that means? By signing such a form, the parent declares that “immunization conflicts with the parents sincerely held convictions,” according to ISPA’s definition. Whose legal business is it what parents think about any medical intervention? Why sign a form with self-incriminating wording, to be entered in a public health (IBM Panorama) database? What if the prescribed wording does not reflect the parents’ conscience or religious beliefs? Why sign a form with compelled speech? Where is The Canadian Press informing readers about these issues?
Coercion & Ontario’s Personal Health Information Protection Act
ISPA is about collecting vaccine records. Ontario’s Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA) states that “…the collection…of personal health information by a health information custodian, the consent… (d) must not be obtained through… coercion. When parents are forced to sign a form in order to prevent their child from being suspended, is that not coercion? What about The Canadian Press informing readers about this?
Suspension & Ontario’s Education Act
Children are targeted and punished when parents refuse to comply with the requirements of ISPA. A growing number of parents all over Ontario, whether their child is fully vaccinated (‘fully’ being a very fluid concept), partly vaccinated or not vaccinated at all, deem ISPA’s type of suspension unacceptable, retaliatory and disproportionate. Public Health has no authority to suspend children. Only a school principal can suspend, based on conditions laid out in Ontario’s Education Act: “A principal shall consider whether to suspend a pupil if he or she believes that the pupil has engaged in any of the following activities while at school, at a school-related activity or in other circumstances where engaging in the activity will have an impact on the school climate:
- Uttering a threat to inflict serious bodily harm on another person;
- Possessing alcohol, illegal drugs or, unless the pupil is a medical cannabis user, cannabis;
- Being under the influence of alcohol or, unless the pupil is a medical cannabis user, cannabis;
- Swearing at a teacher or at another person in a position of authority;
- Committing an act of vandalism that causes extensive damage to school property at the pupil’s school or to property located on the premises of the pupil’s school;
- Bullying;
- Any other activity that is an activity for which a principal may suspend a pupil under a policy of the board.” How does suspending a pupil whose parents want to protect their child’s Personal Health Information relate to any of the conditions mentioned above, allegedly adversely impacting the school climate?”
Do schools, school boards and superintendents then not become that bully themselves?
Just Following Orders
For decades, schools in Ontario have collaborated with (local) public health units without reflecting on their own potential conflicting roles. On the one hand schools aspire to offer education in a safe, inclusive and nurturing environment, and, on the other hand schools bar access to education of children whose only ‘fault’ is that their parents do not consent to sharing their child’s personal health information or their personal and private views about a medical intervention with a public health unit and an IBM Panorama database. Most school staff, school boards and superintendents are not aware that Ontario’s Education Act is not aligned with ISPA. They did and do not realize that ISPA types of suspension are a form of coercion according to PHIPA. They never considered their ISPA suspension actions to be wrong including the constant breech of the children’s’ medical privacy. They single out children, stigmatize them while denying them access to education. How many members of the school staff still do not know that ISPA is ONLY about collecting vaccination records and NOT about mandatory vaccination? How many in school including students automatically judge the pupil/student for not being “up to date with vaccines?”
Bullying & Intimidation
Fortunately, steadily more school principals start reflecting on their dubious role in this ISPA game of coercion, intimidation, bullying and retaliation. Others however seem behave more aggressively than ever before. The following strategies have been observed all over Ontario: Principals and school staff who literally bar access to school premises; keep the pupil in the principal’s office, not allowing the child go outside for recess; stick big red papers in the agenda of the child, visible to everyone; (threaten to) call the police on children trespassing; (threaten to) call CAS (Children’s Aid Societies) on the parents; call the school bus company and instruct them to prevent a pupil from entering the school bus. Breeching medical privacy time and again while doing so.
Our Story
As a family we were exasperated with Ottawa Public Health’s three years of bullying between 2016 and 2019. We refused to sign an exemption form with prescribed wording, with compelled speech. We did not want our son’s information in any health database. We had accepted our son’s suspension in the first year in an Ottawa high school, but by year 3 with another threat of suspension, we were done with the intimidation.
Our son refused to be suspended. In that third year, we ignored OPH and asked the principal of our son’s school in Ottawa to personally write and sign an official suspension letter, based on the conditions laid down in Ontario’s Education Act. The principal felt too uncomfortable to do that. Our son stayed at school and Ottawa Public Health gave up in the end pursuing a suspension.
Now, six years later, it seems that the aggression from local public health units and schools has increased exponentially. But, so have the numbers of parents who are fed up with this type of medical tyranny. Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health Kieran Moore denies that this earlier mentioned over-the-top behavior by schools, school boards and superintendents is a result of advice coming from Ontario’s Ministry of Health. Does that mean that local Public Health Units advise schools, principals, school boards and superintendents to act like bullies?
Walk the Talk
News agency The Canadian Press claims: “Everything that we do must be honest, unbiased and unflinchingly fair…We pursue with equal vigor all sides of a story.” You tell staff to “Be impartial when handling any news affecting parties or matters in controversy. Give fair representation to all sides at issue.”
When it comes to reporting about vaccines I see bias; I see a one-sided story of government and industry propaganda; I see a lack of impartiality about matters of (alleged) controversy; I see a lack of knowledge about Ontario’s legislation and I see a lack of reporting about ‘real people,’ real parents and their children who stand up against coercion, intimidation and bullying by health and education institutions. I do not see compassion and fairness whatsoever. All I see is a piece of propaganda to increase childhood vaccine uptake and the promotion of an electronic immunization registration system.
Please consider changing your stance and walking the talk of your news principles. The world is already too full of empty rhetoric.
Sincerely,
Margreet van den Berg
Chelsea, Quebec
Ontario’s Immunization School Pupils Act
Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004
Ontario Immunization Advisory Committee Conflict of Interest Summary
Vaccination records startup CANImmunize spins out of Ottawa Hospital (2019)
The Globe and Mail, Square Victoria Communications, Group Torstar own The Canadian Press.