A former Ontario medical officer of health who became a lightning rod during Covid for his opposition to lockdowns and vaccine mandates is trying his hand at politics.
Matt Strauss, a physician who served as Haldimand-Norfolk’s acting medical officer of health throughout much of the pandemic, is seeking the Conservative nomination in the southern Ontario riding of Kitchener South–Hespeler.
If successful, Strauss will be running against Liberal MP Valerie Bradford.
Strauss, who was born in and lives in Kitchener, says on his campaign website he “understands our health care system better than anyone.”
“He saw firsthand how government incompetence, waste, and mismanagement directly hurt patients and communities.”
Strauss has been a consistent critic of broad measures like lockdowns and vaccine mandates, advocating for an “individualized” approach to medicine, which he’s argued was the norm until Covid.
“I am pro-vaccine and anti-mandate. I am pro-public health and anti-lockdown,” he wrote in February 2022, while Ontario still maintained mask and vaccine passports and the unvaccinated were barred from airplanes, trains, and the federal workforce.
“I don’t think ivermectin works, but I don’t mind if you want to talk about it. This is called liberalism and it was the dominant political philosophy in Canada until March 2020.”
Strauss’ appointment as acting medical officer of health in 2021 was criticized by lockdown proponents. Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur called for Strauss’ appointment to be rescinded over his views.
Strauss said his critics were the anti-science ones, not him.
“I welcome conversation and fair criticism of these science-based views,” he wrote at the time. “Such discourse is part of the scientific process. The politicization of my appointment and ad hominem attacks against me, conversely, are not. In fact, such attempts are themselves anti-scientific. Science is not a popularity contest, nor is it an agglomeration of credentialed opinions.”
Strauss is currently suing Queen’s University, where he served on the medical faculty, for allegedly forcing him out of his position through a series of “malicious, aggressive, condescending and defamatory statements” he says the university made about him.
