It has been five years since Canadians were told to trust the experts and that the science was settled. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, still live with the aftermath of that sloganeering — including a former Member of Parliament who is now using what’s left of her platform to say the quiet part out loud.
Former Conservative MP Nelly Shin represented Port Moody–Coquitlam in British Columbia through the peak of the pandemic. She took the shots so she could keep showing up for her constituents in Ottawa, then later stepped away from public life because of debilitating symptoms she describes as long COVID.
Shin attended the Allison Inquiry hearings on Parliament Hill from September 8–11, where Canadians reporting vaccine-related injuries testified about lost careers, crushed finances and doctors who would not put the words “vaccine injury” in a chart.
After listening, she went home and wrote a Substack piece titled A Call for Canada to Support the Vaccine Injured and Move Together Toward Closure from a Pandemic We All Want to Forget. In it, she argues the same government that enforced lockdowns and mandates “in the name of saving lives” has turned a blind eye to the people still suffering as a result of their unprecedented measures.
“No injury, no sickness or illness is a controversial issue, but circumstances right now have made it a controversial issue and people don’t want to touch it,” Shin told me. “What we’re dealing with is people who are sick, who need treatment, but there’s so little out there that the government and the health officials in Canada are willing to discuss.”
Shin was candid about her own case — four trips to the ER after a severe bout of pneumonia, breathing problems, brain fog and exhaustion triggered by any level of exertion. “Nothing shows up [on the labs],” she said. “So that’s the frustrating part.”
She was an MP when the shots rolled out under emergency authorization, and she had doubts about taking the novel injection. “I wasn’t sure how much time and robust research had gone in in terms of the after effects, the long-term effects,” she said. Her decision came in what she calls a “panic of survival,” with death counts broadcast daily which kept the public fearful and submissive. “To keep saying that this is a perfect, infallible vaccine and keep promoting it to the degree that the government did, I think it was a huge risk.”
That risk is one Ottawa still refuses to revisit. The federal Vaccine Injury Support Program — now rebranded — has become a case study in lost files, high rejection rates and administrative costs that dwarf the help actually delivered. Shin doesn’t see a one-off glitch, but a pattern: “There’s just a lack of will or interest. Nobody wants to talk about COVID now.”
Her first demand is simple acknowledgement, so the professional chill on doctors can lift and physicians can openly discuss treatments — including the alternative protocols that get mocked. “You can’t just tell someone to go to the corner and figure it out on their own and just wilt,” she said. “What are they left with? It’s just so cruel.”
Asked what single commitment she’d put to sitting MPs and Health Canada, Shin didn’t hesitate: “Be careful not to over control or over manage a situation… You can’t so confidently, with such grandiosity, force people to take something that hasn’t been properly tested.”
Canadians who are still sick don’t need another communications exercise. They need the chill lifted, the files found, and doctors free to treat the patient in front of them instead of protecting the narrative.
