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Excess mortality researcher Denis Rancourt, Ph.D., on Tuesday told Canadian lawmakers that national mortality statistics show “screaming safety signals” following the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines — including increases in deaths among infants and children and increases in turbo cancers.
Testifying at Canada’s Allison Inquiry, Rancourt also argued that COVID-19-era government interventions — including lockdowns, isolating the elderly, closing businesses and withdrawing government support programs — also drove excess mortality during the pandemic.
Rancourt based his arguments on his analysis of official mortality data from Statistics Canada and in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He described how COVID-19 vaccines directly harmed individuals, and how specific pandemic policies caused broader societal harm.
His presentation came on the opening day of the Allison Inquiry, a four-day hearing chaired by Canadian Member of Parliament Dean Allison. The inquiry collected testimony from 50 Canadians injured by COVID-19 vaccines, along with testimony from physicians, scientists and other witnesses.
4,000 excess infant deaths in the U.S. alone
Infant mortality had been declining in the U.S. before the pandemic. That trend reversed during the pandemic, according to Rancourt’s data — but not until 2022, nine months after COVID-19 vaccination was recommended for pregnant women.
Rancourt estimated the change represented approximately 4,000 excess infant deaths in the U.S. from 2022 to 2024.
He presented a similar case for Canada, although the raw numbers were much lower due to the smaller population. After Canada issued its vaccine guidance for pregnant women on May 28, 2021, he said mortality rose among infants, with a marked increase nine months after the recommendations.
He estimated there were 200 excess infant deaths in Canada during that time, with 10 excess pregnancy-related deaths.
Data show 2,000+ excess deaths among 1- to 4-year-olds in U.S.
Rancourt identified more than 2,000 excess deaths among children ages 1-4 in the U.S. between 2021 and 2024.
He attributed an initial increase in 2021 partly to the abrupt withdrawal of federal financial assistance in some states.
But Rancourt said the largest increase coincided with the June 17, 2022, authorization of COVID-19 vaccines for young children. Excess deaths peaked precisely with the vaccine rollout.
Canadian mortality data showed a similar age-specific pattern. Rancourt shared mortality trends for Canadian children ages 1-4, 5-9 and 10-14, showing each group experienced a pronounced increase during the year COVID-19 vaccines became available for that particular age group.
The spikes in excess mortality were “very sudden,” he said. The increases did not occur during the first two years of the pandemic, he emphasized.
“As soon as you vaccinated these age groups and not before, not when there was COVID, not in the first two years of the pandemic. But when you started vaccinating them, that is the signature that you see in the mortality [data],” Rancourt said. “It’s absolutely stunning.”
He estimated 410 excess deaths among Canadian children ages 1-14.
‘Turbo cancers’ and excess cancer deaths
Rancourt said that rapidly progressing cancers, also called “turbo cancers,” are not a new phenomenon. Scientific literature on “hyperprogressive disease,” or HPD, has reported such cancers in some patients undergoing immunotherapy since 2015, when the new treatments became available.
However, excess mortality data now show signals of an unusually aggressive increase in cancer mortality following the vaccine rollouts, according to Rancourt.
Rancourt identified more than 4,000 excess cancer deaths among Americans ages 5-44 during the study period. An estimated 960 of those were among young people ages 5-24. He highlighted a sharp increase in deaths from cancers of the long bones and limbs.
Rancourt called the increase “definitely a safety signal.”
He also estimated that 240 excess deaths among Americans ages 25-44 involved multiple primary cancers — separate primary tumors occurring in different organs rather than a single cancer metastasizing to other parts of the body.
Approximately 1,500 excess deaths due to these cancers occurred in people 75 and older. He said his research group has observed similar signals in Canada, but researchers are still analyzing those data.
It’s not just the vaccines — pandemic policies also linked to excess deaths
The second half of Rancourt’s presentation focused on an argument his research group has built over several years of excess mortality analysis — that government policy responses to COVID-19 caused excess mortality.
For example, his research team examined more than 80 province-specific socioeconomic variables in Canada to determine which were linked to excess mortality.
They found that excess mortality correlated strongly with GDP per capita. “The more wealth generation you have in the province, the more excess deaths you have,” he said.
He surmised that when the economy shut down in provinces with vibrant economies, it had devastating effects on workers and their families.
Policies designed to protect elderly contributed to their deaths
Rancourt compared weekly excess mortality with an Oxford University index measuring the intensity of measures intended to protect elderly people, including isolation and lockdown policies.
Increases in the severity of those measures corresponded with large mortality peaks, Rancourt said. Those peaks were then followed by periods of unusually low mortality.
“And that’s because you’ve killed so many people in that first peak that there’s less people of that age to die in the weeks that follow,” he said. “That’s called the dry tinder effect.”
He interpreted the pattern as evidence that measures intended to protect elderly Canadians instead contributed to their deaths.
During questioning after his presentation, Rancourt was asked whether that meant elderly people should not have been isolated and locked down.
“Absolutely,” he responded.
Rancourt said social isolation and severe stress can have profound physiological effects, particularly among vulnerable populations.
“If you had not tried to save the elderly by isolating them and locking them in” the mortality outcome would have been different, he said.
“You have to know that isolation kills,” he said. “This is unambiguous.”
Cutting financial support also correlated with deaths
Rancourt said another mortality signal appeared when governments withdrew pandemic-era financial assistance.
Canada and the U.S. initially provided enormous financial support to workers and families after governments shut down large portions of the economy.
Those programs were so effective that poverty actually declined in Canada during 2020 and 2021, when more than $1 trillion was given out, Rancourt said.
But mortality increased following major reductions in financial assistance, according to the data he presented.
“It’s worse if you give money, if you give support and you cut it, it’s worse than if you’d never given it,” Rancourt said.
No evidence of viral pandemic, Rancourt argued
Rancourt said his team’s all-cause mortality research across North America and Europe failed to show the mortality pattern that would be expected if a spreading respiratory virus were the primary cause of excess mortality.
“What we found is that there was no viral spread causing death,” he said.
Rancourt described the spread in mortality as “geostatic,” rather than “geotemporal” — meaning mortality sometimes appeared to peak in one geographic location without spreading into neighboring regions.
As an example, he cited the dramatic differences between the area around Milan in northern Italy, which experienced massive early mortality spikes, and Rome, which had no comparable event.
Both cities had similar demographics and similar types of exposure — through international airports and other types of transportation networks — but very different outcomes.
If there had been a viral disease, they should have seen a similar type of spread and similar mortality rates.
“Identical systems, identical types of societies, just as many poor, high-density urban areas,” he said.
Rancourt said the geographic patterns were “inconsistent with the accepted theory of how a virus spreads” through person-to-person respiratory transmission.
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‘Assaults’ drove excess mortality, ‘not a virus’
Rancourt ended his presentation by telling the members of the inquiry that his research led him to conclude that government policies and toxic vaccines were to blame for excess deaths in the COVID-19 period.
He said:
“History will record that the COVID period was, in effect, a massive and unnecessary multifaceted assault against people, exploiting fear and causing harm, injury and death, especially in the most vulnerable. All governments under U.S. hegemony and media influence cooperated or imitated. Canada was no exception.
“The vaccines are toxic and caused many deaths and injuries in plain sight of robust national statistics.”
He listed economic shutdowns, fear, mandates, isolation, medical interventions and vaccination among the “assaults” that he believes, based on the data he analyzed, caused excess mortality.
Rancourt singled out COVID-19 vaccination as the most devastating. Unlike other pandemic measures, it involved administering a pharmaceutical product directly to large numbers of healthy as well as vulnerable people, including elderly people, pregnant women and children.
Rancourt conceded that excess mortality data cannot, on their own, conclusively prove what caused individual deaths. He argued instead that uncertainty about causation should not become a reason to ignore unusual population-level signals.
“Science can never prove causality,” Rancourt said. But institutional capture can “always minimize and invalidate screaming safety signals and personal hardship.”
The patterns he presented should have triggered investigation and changes in government policy, he said.
“These are the signals I showed you today,” Rancourt said. They “needed to be acknowledged right away and used to change government and medical establishment behavior.”
“And it was not.”
Watch Rancourt’s presentation here:
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