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Canada’s federal government has dropped the word “injury” from the country’s vaccine injury compensation program. It’s one of several changes authorities made to the program in recent weeks, including some that may open the door for more people to receive compensation.
The Western Standard reported Tuesday that an internal Public Health Agency of Canada memo dated Feb. 27 outlined plans to rename the Vaccine Injury Support Program to the Vaccine Impact Assistance Program. Blacklock’s Reporter first broke the story.
The change, which took effect June 12, is linked to the federal government’s takeover of the program in April from a private contractor accused of mismanaging the program and delaying the claims process.
“Given the extent of program changes and the transition to administration by the Government of Canada, rebranding this renewed program with a new name is an important part of the program’s communications approach,” the memo stated.
The Public Health Agency followed through with the name change even though research suggests that similar programs in other advanced economies typically include the words “injury,” “damage” or “accidents” in their names, and that “vaccine injury” was the most frequently searched phrase related to this topic.
Despite this, the memo states that the agency opted to drop the word “injury” from the program’s name because use of that term “may presuppose a conclusion or decision.”
Mark Johnson, a spokesperson for the Public Health Agency, told The Defender that the name “was updated to reflect the new program launch.”
“While the term ‘vaccine injury’ denotes the causal link between a vaccine and a medical diagnosis, the term ‘impact’ more clearly reflects the objective of the program in providing financial support to eligible claimants, to address some of the financial impacts of the specific vaccine injury,” Johnson said.
Wayne Rohde, an expert in global vaccine injury compensation programs and author of “The Vaccine Court: The Dark Truth of America’s Vaccine Injury Compensation Program” and “The Vaccine Court 2.0,” said the name change “is not trivial.”
“In the U.K., their program is called the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme. … In the U.S., we have the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program and the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program [CICP]. The U.K. and Canada schemes do not include injury compensation in their names. This is a slight legal difference,” Rhode said.
Notably, Canada’s federal vaccine compensation program excludes Quebec, which administers its own Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
The change took effect just days after the Canadian Parliament launched an inquiry into COVID-19 vaccine injuries. Dean Allison, a conservative member of parliament, announced the inquiry earlier this month. Patients, clinicians, researchers and policy experts are slated to testify in September.
‘Most of the money was not used for the injured’
Canada launched its vaccine injury compensation program in 2021 with an initial 75 million Canadian dollar (approximately $53 million) budget earmarked for the first five years of operations.
As of Nov. 30, 2025, the program received 3,557 claims — of which 252 were approved. The program awarded a total of CA$21,474,722 in compensation, or about CA$78,374 (approximately $55,000) per claim.
Global News reported in April that the “beleaguered” program came under criticism after it was revealed that Oxaro, the private firm hired to operate the program using government funds, spent CA$36 million on administration — CA$15 million more than it awarded in compensation to vaccine injury victims.
A July 2025 Global News investigation featured interviews with vaccine-injured people who said they were left waiting for their claims to be processed or approved.
“Many of the injured are still waiting for help,” Global News reported at the time. The outlet cited some of the program’s employees, who described its inner workings as “chaos.”
One of the claimants who spoke with Global News is Kayla Pollock. In 2022, Pollock developed vaccine-induced transverse myelitis after receiving Moderna’s COVID-19 shot. She subsequently woke up paralyzed, and later sued Moderna.
Pollock, who suffers from incomplete quadriplegia and requires a wheelchair to move around, said she has “spent more than four years navigating Canada’s Vaccine Injury Support Program,” making her “one of the program’s longest-waiting applicants.”
Pollock, whose claim remains unresolved as there are “currently no physicians available to assess claims,” added:
“I have documented my experience publicly, spoken with journalists, lawyers, physicians, elected officials and other vaccine-injured Canadians, and advocated for greater transparency and accountability within the program.
“My experience, along with the stories of other injured Canadians, contributed to broader public awareness and reporting about the challenges facing the program and the concerns surrounding its administration.”
Such allegations contributed to the Canadian government taking over administration of the program on April 1.
Rohde said he’s been following the workings of Canada’s vaccine injury program “since the very beginning.”
“One of the biggest complaints against the Canadian system was that most of the money was not used for the injured,” Rohde said. He cited a series of reports by another Canadian outlet, Rebel News, that led the Canadian government to “audit the money allocated.”
In one report, published in February, Rebel News revealed internal documents showing that the program “prioritized media messaging over victims.”
In October 2024, Rebel News reported that the program struggled to respond to the volume of claims it received and to calculate compensation for injured children in particular, “since they have no income history to determine potential earnings.”
“The Canadian government had to make a change and brought the system ‘in-house,’ to be administered by a government agency,” Rohde said.
But Pollock said removing the term “injury” from the program’s name “risks minimizing” the experience of vaccine-injured people.
“I do not believe changing the language changes the reality. Canadians who have experienced serious adverse events are looking for answers, support and accountability. Using clear language helps people find the program and understand who it is meant to serve,” Pollock said.
Canada broadens eligibility for submitting vaccine injury claims
While dropping the word “injury” from the name of Canada’s vaccine injury program has raised some eyebrows, other recent changes appear to make the program easier to navigate — and may allow for some previously rejected claims to be reconsidered.
The Western Journal reported that claimants will now have the right to file a claim up to three years after a vaccine injury becomes apparent, or when a probable link to vaccination is determined. Under the previous rules, claimants had three years from the date of vaccination or death to file a claim.
The program will also launch a new call center for claimants and will consider applications from 225 people whose claims were previously rejected for missing the three-year deadline.
Johnson said the Public Health Agency “acknowledges the frustration and hardship that many applicants faced while applying” for compensation.
He said that the agency is “focused on making the process clearer, more responsive and easier to navigate, while ensuring that every claim receives the careful consideration it deserves” by loosening the eligibility requirements for potential claimants.
Johnson added that the program plans to “address the existing backlog of applications.”
Rohde said these changes will bring “better transparency and petition tracking” to the Canadian program — elements he said are still missing from the U.S. government’s vaccine injury compensation programs.
“In the U.S., we are still dealing with a ‘black hole’ for COVID vaccine injuries,” Rohde said.
The CICP, which handles COVID-19 vaccine injury claims in the U.S., has been criticized for its low rate of payouts and the substantial hurdles that hinder the process for claimants.
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Despite reforms, Canada’s compensation program ‘lacking in a few areas’
Changes to Canada’s vaccine injury compensation program come amid a gradual decline in public trust in vaccines.
A December 2025 survey by polling firm Leger found Canadians’ trust in vaccines has “declined over the last five years,” with 26% of respondents saying their confidence in vaccines has declined since 2019, compared to 14% who said it has increased during that period.
Vaccination has been a political flashpoint in Canada in recent years, particularly in relation to the country’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and restrictions on the unvaccinated during the pandemic.
In 2024, Canada’s Federal Court ruled the Canadian government’s use of the Emergencies Act in 2022 to disperse the “Convoy for Freedom,” which protested the government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates, was “unreasonable” and violated several articles of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Some Canadian physicians who questioned the safety or efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines or who proposed alternative treatments faced investigation and disciplinary actions and were accused of spreading “misleading, incorrect or inflammatory” messages to the public.
In February, Health Canada, the agency responsible for the country’s national health policy, said it would need up to 15 years to release records on vaccine injuries.
Ongoing deficiencies related to the operations of the Vaccine Impact Assistance Program may be contributing to this growing mistrust.
“While the new Canadian program has some major improvements, it is still lacking in a few areas,” Rohde said.
“One is causation. In Canada, the petitioner’s submission is still treated as causation-in-fact. No injury table, unlike in the U.S. This means that, for injuries such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, myocarditis and anaphylaxis, there is a presumption of causation in the U.S. Not so in the Canadian system.”
Mathematician and physician Sam Dubé, M.D., Ph.D., said claimants are still “required to have a ‘credible source’ establish a link between the injury and ‘vaccine.’”
“With physicians being persecuted for openly questioning the ‘vaccines,’ how easy will it be to get one’s physician to come forward?” Dubé asked.
Pollock welcomed the program’s relaxed eligibility requirements, which she said “recognize a real problem that many injured Canadians have faced.”
However, “the priority should be reducing wait times, improving transparency, ensuring qualified medical experts review claims and providing timely support to Canadians whose lives have been permanently changed. For me, those issues have a much greater impact than what the program is called.”
Related articles in The Defender
- ‘People Will Be Heard’: Canada Launches Inquiry Into COVID Vaccine Injuries
- Health Canada Slow-Walks Release of Vaccine Injury Reports
- ‘They Stole His Practice’: Medical Board Drops Case Against Canadian Doctor Who Questioned COVID Vaccines
- Health Authorities Hoped to Silence Doctors Who Questioned COVID Vaccines by Threatening Their Careers
- Canadian Truckers Score Big Victory Over Trudeau in Federal Court
- Federal COVID Vaccine Injury Program Pays for Another Death — But Denials Still Hover Above 98%
