EDMONTON, Alberta (LifeSiteNews) – The medical regulatory college in the Canadian province of Alberta dropped professional misconduct charges against one of its member physicians who gave out COVID jab exemptions to his patients in a victory for doctors’ rights, his legal team said.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) said in a press release that it was pleased the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta (CPSA) decided to drop charges against Dr. Michal Princ, who granted numerous COVID jab exemptions to his patients.

“Our client was ethically motivated by the sacrosanct and longstanding principle of ‘do no harm.’ We are pleased the CPSA has withdrawn charges, although we wish the charges had been withdrawn to protect professional independence, not based on the Ingram ruling,” said Andre Memauri, who served as co-counsel for Princ on behalf of the JCCF.

“The relationship of trust between each physician and his or her patients must be brought back to the forefront of medical practice.”

Princ was scheduled to appear before the CPSA for a five-day hearing in March. However, the hearing has now been canceled after the charges were dropped on January 10.

The CPSA accused Princ last April of not following the provincial COVID jab exemption requirements imposed on Alberta doctors by the college as well as Alberta Health Services and Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health.

Princ’s charges were dropped due to a July 2023 court ruling in Alberta in which Justice Barbara Romaine from Alberta’s Court of Kings Bench ruled in Ingram v. Alberta that politicians violated the province’s health act by making decisions regarding COVID mandates without authorization. The court ruling in effect invalidated health orders.

College violated ‘ethical principle’ of informed ‘consent’

The JCCF noted that many Albertans were “injected with the Covid vaccine because refusing this medical treatment would have resulted in loss of employment.”

“Many college and university students were injected because a failure to receive the vaccine would have resulted in suspension or expulsion from university. Many teenagers and young adults, a demographic not threatened by Covid, went ahead with the injection only because they wanted to continue participating in sports and recreation. Many Albertans and other Canadians were fired for refusing to get injected with a substance for which no long-term safety data exists. They were then unable to collect employment insurance,” the JCCF stated.

JCCF president John Carpay observed, “The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta violated the ethical principle of informed and voluntary consent for medical treatment by threatening medical doctors with the loss of their license if they exercised their independent clinical judgment about the safety and efficacy of new vaccines for which no long-term safety data existed.”

The Alberta doctors’ patient FAQ section concerning the COVID jabs stated that physicians could only “offer an exemption based on the latest medical evidence from authorities like Alberta Health, Alberta Health Services, the National Advisory Council on Immunization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

The JCCF noted, however, that the notice “was not an actual scientific analysis but rather a ‘gray literature’ survey of what others were doing and recommending.”

Princ co-counsel Glenn Blackett stated, “One thing we found most alarming about all of this guidance was the degree to which the basic medical ethical principle of informed consent was simply ignored.”

“How did health professionals in Alberta recommending or administering vaccines obtain informed consent where patients were subject to the coercive pressure of vaccine mandates?” he said.

“The CPSA told doctors how to participate in and, effectively, help enforce the vaccine mandate program, which consisted of rejecting all or ‘virtually’ all exemption requests. But it seems the CPSA entirely failed to grapple with the resulting ethical dilemmas.”’

As for Alberta Health’s “Rapid Brief,” it says, “This review of current guidelines considers medical exemptions and does not address human rights, religious or other possible non-medical reasons for seeking vaccine exemptions.”

The JCCF observed that the CPSA’s own general standards of practice “include the doctrine of informed consent.”

“The CPSA standards include the commonsense observation that, for informed consent to exist, a patient must be free of ‘undue influence, duress or coercion.’”

“The ‘vaccine mandates’ in Alberta and across Canada effectively turned millions of Canadians into second-class citizens who were prevented from participating in sports, enjoying restaurants, leaving and re-entering Canada, visiting their elderly parents in nursing homes, continuing their university education, and keeping their jobs,” the JCCF stated.

Princ is a family medicine physician who has 49 years of experience and has been in Canada since 1989 when he moved here from Czechoslovakia, which was then under communist rule.

The CPSA has faced heat from Alberta doctors and nurses as of late. After a backlash from pro-life healthcare workers, it backed down on a plan that would mandate all healthcare workers in the province, including physicians and their assistants, to be in effect forced to be complicit in abortions or assisted suicides.

The Alberta’s Court of Kings Bench Ingram v. Alberta decision put into doubt all cases involving those facing non-criminal COVID-related charges in the province.

As a result of the court ruling, Alberta Crown Prosecutions Service (ACPS) said Albertans currently facing COVID-related charges will likely not face conviction but will instead have their charges stayed.

Thus far, in addition to Princ, pizzeria owner Jesse Johnson, café owner Chris Scott, and Alberta pastors James Coates, Tim Stephens, and Artur Pawlowski, who were all jailed for keeping their churches open under then-leader of Alberta Jason Kenney, have had the COVID charges against them dropped due to the court ruling.

Countless others have had smaller charges against them for going against COVID mandates dropped as well. However, there are still some facing charges relating to border blockade protests. Also, many other Canadians who do not live in Alberta are still fighting their COVID-related charges.

Danielle Smith took over from Kenney as leader of the United Conservative Party (UCP) on October 11, 2022, after winning the leadership. Kenney was ousted due to low approval ratings and for reneging on promises not to lock Alberta down as well as enacting a vaccine passport.

Under Kenney, thousands of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare and government workers lost their jobs for choosing to not get the jabs, leading Smith to say – only minutes after being sworn in – that over the past year the “unvaccinated” were the “most discriminated against” group of people in her lifetime.

Throughout most of the COVID crisis, Canadians from coast to coast were faced with COVID mandates, including jab dictates, put in place by both the provincial and federal governments.

After much pushback, thanks mainly to the Freedom Convoy, most provincial mandates were eliminated by the summer of 2022.