The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta (CPSA) has withdrawn its charges of professional misconduct against Dr. Michael Princ after he refused to comply with its rigid COVID vaccine exemption policy.

The family doctor of forty-nine years was charged by the CPSA in April of 2023 after investigations indicated that he didn’t conform with their vaccine exemption requirements as per their 2021 issued “Guidance for Physicians.”

Dr Princ’s lawyers welcomed the withdrawal of the charges, hailing it as a small victory. 

“Our client was ethically motivated by the sacrosanct and longstanding principle of ‘do no harm,’” said his co-counsel, Andre Memauri.

However, Memaruri said he wished the charges were dropped for the sake of protecting professional and physician independence. Instead, the charges were likely dropped due to precedence that had been set from a previous ruling, when courts nullified the health order on account that it came from the provincial cabinet rather than the Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH). 

In other words, the mandate was considered invalid on a technicality, which leaves Albertan physicians just as vulnerable to similar mandates in the future, so long as they come solely from the CMOH.

Nonetheless, as a result of the ruling, Dr Princ’s five day disciplinary hearing, which was previously scheduled for March 2024, has been effectively canceled.

JCCF President speaks up for coerced Albertans 

John Carpay, the president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), stated in a press release that the CPSA’s mandate led to “an unknown number of Albertans getting pressured, coerced or manipulated into receiving an injection that they did not consent to voluntarily.”

According to the JCCF legal team, the criteria from CPSA that allowed a physician to grant an COVID-19 exemption was thoroughly vague, and made it virtually impossible for a permanent exemption to be granted to a patient, even if a vaccine injury had occurred.

“Draconian” CPSA violated the sacred principle of informed consent, lawyers say

According to Carpay, the CPSA openly violated the hallowed principle of informed consent for medical treatments by threatening physicians with the loss of their license if they “exercised their independent clinical judgment about the safety and efficacy of new vaccines for which no long-term safety data existed.”