Action4Canada and Vaccine Choice Canada: Organized Pressure on Parents and School Boards, Built on a Study That Isn't Peer-Reviewed
Action4Canada and Vaccine Choice Canada are Canadian advocacy groups that campaign directly against childhood vaccination, targeting parents, school boards, and provincial governments with letters, "notices of liability," and a steady stream of claimed scientific evidence. Their flagship 2025 childhood-vaccine citation — a study of nearly 50,000 children linking vaccination to autism — was not published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and has been publicly dissected by epidemiologists as a repeat of previously retracted, advocacy-funded research.
Who these groups are and what they do
Vaccine Choice Canada, led by Ted Kuntz, and Action4Canada, founded by Tanya Gaw and based in Surrey, B.C., are among Canada's most visible anti-vaccine advocacy organizations. Both run active weekly programming (Action4Canada's "Empower Hour"), maintain dedicated "Childhood Vaccines" resource pages aimed at parents, and coordinate direct pressure campaigns on public institutions — including letters and "Notices of Liability" sent to school boards, superintendents, and elected officials opposing school vaccination-reporting requirements and mandates.
⚠️ The "50,000 children" study isn't what it's presented as
Action4Canada's Childhood Vaccines page cites, as of early 2025, "a new large-scale, peer-reviewed study of nearly 50,000 children" linking vaccination to neurodevelopmental disorders including autism. The study in question — by Mawson and Jacob, analyzing Florida Medicaid data — was published in Science, Public Health Policy and the Law, which is not a peer-reviewed scientific journal but a self-published advocacy outlet, and was funded by the National Vaccine Information Center, a U.S. anti-vaccine organization. Epidemiologists who reviewed the paper's methodology found it repeated the flaws of the same authors' previously retracted work and did not support the causal claims built on top of it.
Direct pressure on schools and parents
Beyond publishing content, both organizations coordinate direct action aimed at institutions responsible for children. Action4Canada's own materials describe campaigns serving Notices of Liability on individual school board trustees over teacher vaccination policy, and in early 2026 both groups sent formal letters to school administrators, superintendents, and government ministries in British Columbia, Ontario, and New Brunswick opposing measures including the suspension of students in Ontario schools who had not reported their vaccination status. The stated goal in each case is to make individual school officials personally aware of, and personally liable for, decisions the organizations characterize as unlawful.
The legal track record behind the advocacy
A 391-page lawsuit a judge called "more of a story"
Action4Canada's central legal vehicle has been a constitutional challenge against the B.C. and federal governments' COVID-19 measures, filed in August 2021 by lawyer Rocco Galati. In September 2022, a B.C. Supreme Court justice struck the claim in its entirety, describing the 391-page filing as reading more like "a story" advancing wide-ranging conspiracy theories — including claims about vaccine microchipping and a pre-planned pandemic — than a proper legal pleading capable of being answered. Action4Canada's appeal of that decision was dismissed in full by the B.C. Court of Appeal in February 2024, with costs awarded against the plaintiffs; Action4Canada's public statements characterized the outcome as a partial win.
The lawyer behind the lawsuit is facing his own reckoning
⚠️ A $6 million class action from his own former clients
On February 13, 2025, four of Galati's former clients — including Scarlett Martyn, a Toronto paramedic who says she was ousted from her job over vaccine mandates — filed a proposed class action against Galati, his firm, and the Constitutional Rights Centre in the Alberta Court of King's Bench, seeking over $6 million in damages. The claim alleges negligence, breach of contract, and breach of fiduciary duty across six COVID-related legal challenges Galati filed between 2020 and 2024 in Ontario, British Columbia, and federal court — including the Action4Canada and Vaccine Choice Canada actions. It alleges Galati collected millions of dollars in fees and public donations while repeatedly filing claims courts found procedurally defective, then recommended costly appeals of those same flawed filings rather than correcting them, leaving some plaintiffs owing up to $200,000 in costs. The suit also alleges Galati advised unionized clients not to pursue grievances through their unions — their only viable legal avenue — without disclosing that conflict. Action4Canada publicly rejected the lawsuit, stating the four plaintiffs had no authority to act on the organization's behalf and calling their claims "entirely without merit."
Separately, in August 2025, the Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed Galati's own defamation lawsuit against a group of his critics — the Canadian Society for the Advancement of Science and Public Policy and a donor, Donna Toews — who had publicly questioned his legal tactics and the transparency of funds raised for his COVID-related lawsuits. The court applied Ontario's anti-SLAPP provisions, ruling that the critics' statements were protected expression on a matter of public interest and that Galati had failed to demonstrate the substantial harm required to override that protection. That result followed an earlier, similarly unsuccessful defamation suit Galati brought against the Law Society of Ontario itself, which was also dismissed. Reporting on the case has also noted a sheriff's lien placed on Galati's Toronto home over unpaid costs from one of his failed appeals.
Why this belongs on QuackeryWatch
Unlike most cases in our Pediatric Quackery section, this isn't a single product or practitioner — it's an organized advocacy movement that manufactures the appearance of scientific legitimacy (a "peer-reviewed" study that isn't) to support direct pressure campaigns aimed at the institutions that make decisions about children's vaccination. It follows the same underlying pattern as homeoprophylaxis elsewhere in this section: eroding confidence in a genuinely effective, well-studied childhood intervention using citations that don't hold up to the scrutiny their presentation implies.