Allison Inquiry | Daniel Freiheit | Day 2 September 9th, 2026

"Daniel Freiheit, a member of the Law Society of Ontario and a certified specialist in corporate and commercial law, has acted for people navigating the Vaccine Injury Support Program. He testifies about what he learned from an Access to Information Act request for the contract between the federal government and the third-party administrator, and from an appeal to the Information Commissioner that later unredacted a schedule. Freiheit says the disclosed contract allocated about 63% of the program budget to administration, compared with roughly 15 to 20% for Ontario's workers' compensation board, and that the schedule was a litigation management plan he believes was designed to slow litigation against the government and the administrator.

With the host, he reads a contract clause allowing claims to be resubmitted when new reliable evidence supports a causal link, and explains how this conflicted with the short appeal windows and firm three-year cutoff that claimants were told about. From his casework he cites the burden of requiring medical records to come directly from care providers, case manager turnover, and a lack of evidence that a medical review board with named, qualified doctors exists.

Freiheit describes the successor Vaccine Impact Assistance Program as an improvement, with no apparent cap on income replacement and a willingness to review earlier denials, though he says it is overwhelmed. He offers recommendations on medical record handling and certified review boards, and answers questions from an MP and the Inquiry's organizers.

Recorded at the Allison Inquiry, Day 2, September 9th, 2026. For more information, including the full list of witnesses and experts, go to allisoninquiry.com.

0:00 Introduction and swearing in
0:24 Background and role
1:03 Access to information request and redactions
2:56 Program budget and administrative costs
4:58 Limited budget and how other countries compensate
5:56 Litigation management plan
7:00 Contract clause on resubmitting claims
9:39 Confusion over appeal deadlines
10:02 Working with the program: medical records and case managers
11:18 MP questions: the new program versus the old
13:33 Concerns about the medical review board
14:00 Recommendations
15:12 Why decision-makers are unnamed
16:03 Closing"