Vaccine injury programs elsewhere also face challenges, criticism

Some Britons have also criticized their program as too slow to assess injury cases, while setting thresholds too high to qualify, and payouts made too low for those who get them.

Canada’s Vaccine Injury Support Program is not the only one of its kind facing major challenges.

Similar efforts in the U.S., U.K. and Australia have come under scrutiny for allegedly failing to support families amid surging applications and desperate pleas for help.

The Australian government closed its new injury claim program and stopped accepting new applications on Sept. 30, 2024, after complaints about how applicants were treated.

Australia had reportedly paid out about C$28.5 million in injury compensation. Its program has been widely criticized at home and by the global cable news outlet, Sky News.

One veteran Australian Liberal MP has begun publicly advocating in Parliament for the injured.

“It’s very distressing even to have these people face to face and speaking to them when you see some of them are so severely damaged,” MP Russell Broadbent told Sky News.

The U.K. program’s administration costs were the equivalent of C$46 million as of January 2025.  That sum exceeds the reported C$43.5 million spent on payouts to injured residents, The Daily Telegraph reported.

As of January 2025, more than 17,500 Britons or their families have made injury claims, but several told the BBC they felt like they had been “airbrushed out of the pandemic.”