New MP Dr. Matt Strauss: COVID Mandates Were “Full Communism”
Conservative MP Dr. Matt Strauss, newly elected for Kitchener South-Hespeler, delivered a blistering and compelling maiden speech in the House of Commons on June 2, 2025, condemning Canada’s COVID-19 mandates as “full communism.” An emergency care physician and former Queen’s University medical professor, Dr. Strauss has been an outspoken critic of pandemic restrictions since the start.
In his speech, Strauss highlighted the unprecedented top-down control imposed during the pandemic — condemning the government for violating fundamental rights, overspending and doubling the national debt.
“The zenith of all this top-down control came during the pandemic,” Strauss told Parliament. “They locked Canadians down in their homes, ruined weddings, funerals, Easters, proms and Christmases, closed the borders, kept mothers from children and brothers from sisters, deprived the House of its ancient rights, spent $600 billion with no budget, and doubled our national debt to pay healthy 16-year-olds to sit in their basements.”
Strauss described his own experience as a whistleblower during the pandemic:
“Physicians, professors and journalists who spoke out were hunted down.”
He says he was dismissed from Queen’s University for his stance on COVID policies. He has filed a $600,000 lawsuit and recounted in Parliament that Dr. Jane Philpott, then Dean of Queen’s Faculty of Health Sciences, told him directly:
“The reason the administration had to harass me was that I criticized the government.”
At the same time, Strauss served as acting medical officer of health for Ontario’s Haldimand-Norfolk region, where he focused on protecting high-risk populations without resorting to mandates that infringed on personal freedoms. His approach contributed to a decrease in mortality rates during his tenure.
Drawing from his family’s history — including relatives who fled communist regimes — Strauss warned that many Canadians, especially immigrants familiar with the dangers of socialism, recognize troubling parallels in current policies:
“The Romanians, Albanians, Polish, Ukrainians, Serbians, Croatians, Lithuanians, Venezuelans, Chinese, Somalis and Ethiopians with lived experience of socialism… do not like it and sent me here.”
Strauss’s speech struck a chord with many Canadians who believe government responses to the pandemic overreached. A 2024 Leger survey found that 36% of Canadians believe governments overreacted to the COVID pandemic, with 41% of men and 32% believing the government exaggerated the threat of COVID-19. The sentiment is especially strong among those under 55. Additionally, one in six people regret taking the COVID vaccine, and 75% believe the pandemic responses were exaggerated. Many young Canadians under 35 do not plan to get future COVID vaccines or boosters.
As Strauss put it,
“If we cannot speak truth to power, everything will continue to break. That is why I had to come here. I refuse to be a cog in their broken machine.”
Watch the speech:
I gave my maiden speech in Canada’s House of Commons:
The Liberals trampled on the Charter rights of Canadians. I see no indication the leopard can change it’s spots. I am here to speak truth to their power. pic.twitter.com/tkmLgZilH0
— Matt Strauss (@strauss_matt) June 3, 2025
Sources:
The Epoch Times, Rebel News, Blacklock’s Reporter, Toronto Sun
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