Ontario?s Chief Medical Officer of Health dodges public health, professionalism issues

Dr. Richard Schabas was Ontario?s Chief Medical Officer of Health from 1987 to 1997. During that time, his only apparent response to concerns about damages being caused to persons with sensitivities because of a flagrant misrepresentation of official reports by Ministry officials (and by regional public health officials) was to ask an underling to pass the concern to another section of the Ministry of Health. (See attached document.) More than 30,000 persons with undiagnosed sensitivities have been unnecessarily killed in Ontario health care, since. While Ontario officials were misrepresenting the findings of the Thomson report, federal officials were acting on them. Federal officials acted until their work was swept aside by a flock of Ontario Liberals elected federally in 1993. Across the country, about 100,000 Canadians with undiagnosed sensitivities have been unnecessarily killed since the federal health department abandoned protections it had been encouraging until 1993. It is, in duration, numbers affected, and extent of injury, one of the top five human rights abuses in Canadian history. The 1985 Ontario Ministry of Health report recommended that public health agencies address community attitudes, but attitudes in the Ministry got in the way.