Suspended doctor faces 28 new sex-crime charges, including sexual touching of minors
CBC
WARNING: This article may affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone affected by it.
A suspended physician who was providing public health services in northern Saskatchewan and psychotherapy in Ontario is now facing a total of 71 criminal charges after police laid 28 new counts on Tuesday, including allegations coinciding with his time as a medical student in Alberta.
Toronto police now accuse David Edward-Ooi Poon of having committed sex crimes going back as far as 2009, the year he began studying at the University of Alberta's medical school.
The 28 newly alleged offences comprise:
Neither these charges nor earlier ones from November and December have been tested or proven in court.
A handful of the new charges indicate an eight-year span when the alleged incidents might have taken place, between January 2009 and May 2017. Three of those counts simply say the alleged offences took place somewhere in Canada, with no greater detail.
Detectives also appear to have identified at least 13 new potential victims in the amended charge sheet, where they are listed by initials. Previously, almost all of the charges against Poon listed "an unknown person" or "a person" as the alleged victims.
Criminal lawyer David Butt, a former sex-crimes prosecutor, says it's important to keep the legal presumption of innocence front of mind when confronted with allegations of this magnitude.
"We cannot let the volume and the moral repugnance that any reasonable person would feel at the breadth and nature of the allegations to in any way distract us from the presumption of innocence," he told CBC News.
Butt said that in a hypothetical scenario where a person is convicted of all of the "offending behaviours" in the allegations, that would constitute a "very serious" and "highly active sexual predator."
"A dangerous offender designation and indeterminate custody would be a very realistic possibility."
Neither Poon nor his lawyers have responded to multiple past requests for comment from CBC News. His lawyers did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the new charges sent Thursday afternoon.
The new charges allege that Poon sexually assaulted a specific person twice in Edmonton in 2012. He was a medical student at the University of Alberta at the time.
The new charges now allege Poon committed voyeurism in April 2025 against a specific person in Saskatchewan. At the time, Poon was working for Northern Medical Services, an initiative of the University of Saskatchewan's college of medicine, as a medical officer of health.
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