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Bureaucrats responsible for public policy seemingly allowed to have private conflicts of interest
Ontario’s key pandemic advisor, Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) Dr. Kieran Moore, declared his own Pfizer conflict of interest. Why can’t anyone in the Ministry of Health ascertain whether or not they knew about it?
Reports on Dr. Moore’s own declared conflict of interest began several months ago when I discovered that he was part of a presentation hosted by the University of Toronto titled “Changing The Way We Work” where he provided information to family doctors on the role that they play in ensuring uptake of the COVID injections.
In that video, Moore himself declares that he has a conflict of interest as he sits on the advisory board for Pfizer’s Lyme Disease North American strategy.
Before Moore’s appointment to Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, he was the Local Medical Officer of Health for the Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox, and Addington Health Unit. Prior to the pandemic, he was hoping that this jurisdiction would be a testing ground for a Lyme Disease Vaccine but I have confirmed with Pfizer Canada that this did not come to fruition. They’re testing it instead in the United States.
Let’s not forget, too, that Dr. Moore received a 30% raise in 2020, during record unemployment, job loss and small business closures for the common folk, with an astronomical yearly earning of $412, 637.00.
It appears that his CMOH salary is more modest, yet still in 2021 he netted nearly $226, 000.00. And in this role, of which he was appointed in June of 2021, he was the key advisor to the Doug Ford conservative government, in implementing indiscriminate vaccine mandates including vaccine passports that saw mass segregation of the unvaccinated from society. The great unwashed could no longer enter public venues, from their children’s own sporting events, to restaurants and cinemas, could not be by the side of their ailing family members during times of distress in hospital, and many were terminated from their jobs without the ability to receive financial social supports that they have paid into their entire tax paying lives.
Moore should have technically disclosed his unethical conflict of interest with Pfizer to Deputy Minister of Health, Dr. Catherine Zahn. Oddly, it’s not an independent review board such as the Ontario Integrity Commissioner.
No, strangely, Moore would have declared this to a deputy minister in his own ministry. I’ve reached out to her numerous times; she doesn’t answer my requests. To note here that Dr. Catherine Zahn made an astronomical $650, 454.00 in 2021, which was down from her pandemic bonus of almost $705,000.00/year salary in 2020.
Why would this taxpayer-funded bureaucrat have to answer to a concerned citizen journalist?
Initially, I was also reaching out to Christine Elliott’s office, who was formerly Minister of Health, but she also doesn’t return my calls. For reference, she was making a mediocre $165,000 a year salary.
I even asked Doug Ford if he knew about this conflict before he appointed Dr. Moore.
This past June, after the Ontario provincial elections that saw then Minister of Health Elliott bow down from re-election, the new Deputy Premier and Minister of Health is now former Ontario Solicitor General, Sylvia Jones. Her salary was also a mediocre $165,000. I emailed her and a few other ministry contacts in charge of communications/operations on August 17 to inquire about the conflict of interest. No one responded.
I continue the investigation because my Access to Information Request (ATIP) has been denied in full.
They cite the following reason:
“Conflict-of-interest declarations submitted by or for Dr. Kieran Moore as part of the vetting process related to obtaining his current position of Chief Medical Officer of Health are HR records and are withheld in full subject to the exclusionary provision of FIPPA – s.65(6) (Labour Relations).”
Basically, they’re withholding his human resources records such as his employment contract. But I don’t want his employment contract. I want to know if he declared a conflict of interest with Pfizer. That’s it.
How can a public servant have private conflicts of interest?
We’re appealing this decision and I’m going to keep digging. To support this important work to highlight the hypocrisy of the bureaucracy, please chip in to offset the costs of my work at Rebel Investigates.
