Three doctors are being ordered to comply with an investigation by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario for alleged misconduct including providing illegitimate medical exemptions for COVID-19 vaccines.
Three doctors are being ordered by the province’s top court to fully comply with an investigation the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) is conducting into their practices, including reports of providing illegitimate medical exemptions for vaccines.
All three physicians, Dr. Mary O’Connor, Dr. Mark Trozzi and Dr. Patrick Phillips, are under investigation for actions influenced by their beliefs that vaccines are a “misguided and ineffective way” to address COVID-19, according to the reasons for judgment issued by the Ontario Superior Court.
(A fourth physician, Dr. Rochagné Kilian, who is under a similar probe, has had her case adjourned until the first week of February as her lawyer Rocco Galati is hospitalized with an undisclosed illness. Kilian’s medical licence was suspended in late October after it was alleged that she provided vaccine exemptions through a site called “Enable Air” and described vaccine passports as a “fascist document.”)
In November, the CPSO said it would rely on the courts as several doctors, including Trozzi, O’Connor and Kilian, were not complying with its investigation. The college alleged that all three refused to provide records.
Trozzi and Phillips did not attend their Ontario Superior Court hearing nor did they send anyone to appear for them. O’Connor’s lawyer Michael Swinwood did appear.
The judgment released Jan. 19 states that the CPSO has received reports that O’Connor, Trozzi and Phillips have been issuing medical exemptions to patients for COVID-19 vaccines and testing without legitimate reasons for giving them out.
The CPSO’s Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committee (ICRC) believes this could amount to professional misconduct, says the judgment. An investigator with the ICRC began examining the medical practices of these three doctors in the summer of 2021.
Justice Edward Morgan ordered the three doctors on Jan. 19 to not withhold any relevant information from investigators and to co-operate fully with the probe, including providing any medical charts and letting investigators enter their property.
In Phillips’ case the CPSO is also concerned about his use of social media, allegedly to promote misinformation about COVID-19 and post confidential information from the CPSO about its investigation.
In June last year, the judgment states, Phillips shared with his 20,000 Twitter followers a Google Drive link containing the investigator’s materials, including the names and contact information of two other doctors who had helped with CPSO in reviewing information about Phillips. The day after the information was tweeted out, one of those doctors told the CPSO that Phillips’ followers were “coming after him.”
Near the end of June, the judgment says, Phillips also posted more tweets that included which investigators were being appointed. Staff and Dr. Judith Plante, then the president of the CPSO, received emails and voice messages that were allegedly “designed to intimidate” after the ICRC’s investigation became public, according to the reasons for judgment — one allegedly called Plante a “corporate medical thug.”
Morgan also ordered Phillips to stop publishing or publicly disclosing names or identifying information of the two doctors who had helped the CPSO in reviewing information about him.
Article From: The Star
Author: Olivia Bowden
