Alberta’s COVID-19 report highlights failures in transparency, decision-making, and accountability
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It is increasingly clear that authorities did not follow the science during the pandemic. Instead, they followed each other—and imposed authoritarian measures on those who dared to disagree.
The Alberta COVID-19 Pandemic Response Final Report provides fresh evidence of this failure. The 269-page document, published in January 2025 after two and a half years of research, details how Alberta’s medical and bureaucratic institutions resisted scrutiny—even after the immediate threat of the virus had passed.
According to the task force that authored the report, Alberta Health Services (AHS) actively obstructed their work.
“During our data review, there has been a lack of willingness on the part of AHS officials to cooperate with the task force in our requests for data and information,” the authors wrote.
For a public health agency to resist transparency in such a critical review is unacceptable—and should have consequences.
The task force also found that Alberta’s medical colleges lacked transparency in their decision-making during the pandemic. Rather than conducting independent reviews, they appeared to defer entirely to Health Canada, AHS, or the chief medical officer of health. Some colleges even admitted they lacked expertise. When asked about their stance on mandatory vaccination, the Alberta College of Paramedics told the task force it was “not a subject matter expert” and instead relied on “Alberta Health and the health-care professionals who are experts.”
The task force reviewed 341 pandemic-related communications across 30 colleges and found only 11 referenced primary sources to support their guidance. The majority of their direction came from the Alberta government (42 per cent), AHS (22 per cent), and the federal government (16 per cent), with the remaining 19 per cent coming from 47 other sources, including the World Health Organization and various national and provincial health associations.
Instead of assessing data critically, agencies repeated one another’s claims, and the colleges followed. The task force called this a “centralizing force” that constrained Alberta’s COVID-19 response within a narrow range of options. This led to exaggerated claims about the effectiveness of certain measures while failing to account for potential harms. Dissenting views were ignored, alternative treatments were dismissed, and the normal scientific process—where hypotheses are tested, debated and refined—was abandoned in favour of enforcing a single narrative.
Even though the immediate threat of COVID-19 has passed, this approach continues. The push to control the pandemic response was not just about public health—it was also about pharmaceutical interests.
To obtain emergency authorization for COVID-19 vaccines, manufacturers needed to prove to regulators that no viable treatment options existed. That meant alternatives like ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine—which some studies showed had potential—had to be dismissed. And that’s exactly what happened, not just in Canada but around the world.
Rather than acting in the public interest, medical and governmental authorities aligned themselves with pharmaceutical companies. They overstated vaccine efficacy, downplayed risks and suppressed discussion of alternatives.
The report’s Chapter 9 on Therapeutics highlights that ivermectin showed promise in treating COVID-19 even before vaccination campaigns began. Nevertheless, in September 2021, the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta and the Alberta College of Pharmacy issued a joint statement against the drug, claiming:
“There is no evidence that prescribing and dispensing ivermectin is beneficial, but there is certainly significant risk of patient harm.”
However, according to the report, the studies used to discredit ivermectin were flawed—and some conclusions did not match the data. The risks of the drug were also exaggerated, largely based on reports of people taking veterinary-grade ivermectin rather than the pharmaceutical version prescribed by doctors. Even then, the threat was minimal.
In fact, the report notes that an analysis of the WHO/Uppsala VigiAccess pharmacovigilance database on March 22, 2021, found that the total number of adverse events linked to ivermectin—after decades of use—was lower than those linked to COVID-19 vaccines.
The report analyzed 103 studies on ivermectin, including 50 randomized controlled trials, which showed lower risk of contracting COVID-19 and lower mortality rates. Similarly, a review of 410 studies on hydroxychloroquine—particularly when combined with zinc—found it significantly reduced the risk of mortality, hospitalization and severe symptoms. Other treatments, including fluvoxamine, colchicine and vitamin D3, also showed promise.
The report makes several critical recommendations, including ending COVID-19 vaccinations for minors, requiring clear warning sheets for adults on vaccine side effects, and preventing regulatory bodies from disciplining doctors for prescribing approved drugs for off-label uses. It also calls for reversing disciplinary actions taken against doctors who prescribed alternative treatments.
These recommendations should be fully implemented by the Alberta government. Doing so could set a precedent for broader medical regulatory reform across Canada. Some of the country’s most thoughtful and courageous doctors have been unfairly punished for challenging the COVID-19 response. They deserve vindication and reinstatement.
More importantly, Canadians deserve a health care system that prioritizes science, transparency and patient well-being—rather than bureaucratic control and pharmaceutical interests.
Lee Harding is a research associate with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
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