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Ken Drysdale Sworn: What the National Citizens Inquiry Was

Day 3 · 3:17:39 · Dean Allison · Ken Drysdale

  • ⚖️ Ken Drysdale is sworn and introduced as NCI commissioners' chair, engineer, and principal author of multi-thousand-page COVID response reports.
  • 🇨🇦 He describes the NCI as a citizen-led, citizen-funded, non-judicial probe of government COVID measures across education, economy, churches, finance and vaccine authorization.
  • 🎥 Counsel notes the National Citizens Archive holds sworn videos resembling today's hearing, with independent commissioners and no subpoena power over officials.

Introduction and overview of the National Citizens Inquiry.

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Transcript

Dean Allison · 3:17:39

And, and we, you know, we'd love to give witnesses all day, and we realize that we're cutting people short. We just made a decision. We could have a few witnesses speak for long periods of time, or we could give more people a voice, but the, the trade-off is they have less time. So we hope that everyone respects that. So we're going to move on to Ken Drysdale as our next witness, and, uh, Ken, I did not make a note as to whether or not you're okay swearing, or do you want to affirm? I want to swear on the Bible. Okay, so if we can get Ken the Bible, put that in your right hand. Ken Drysdale, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

Ken Drysdale · 3:18:19

I do.

Dean Allison · 3:18:21

I'm going to introduce you to the inquiry. Um, Mr. Drysdale is a professional engineer. Entrepreneur, author, and civic leader with more than four decades of experience in engineering, business leadership, and public advocacy. He's a graduate from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering Structural. He founded and served as president of AcuTec Engineering, a nationally recognized firm specializing in Arctic development and complex engineering projects. Over the course of his career, he's led major engineering initiatives across North America and internationally and has served as an expert investigator and witness in numerous structural and forensic engineering cases. From February 2023 through April 2025, Mr. Drysdale served as chairman of the Independent Commissioners of the National Citizens Inquiry.

Dean Allison · 3:19:24

In this role, he helped lead national hearings held across Canada and was a principal author of the inquiry's commissioner's reports examining the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, synthesizing testimony from hundreds of witnesses and thousands of pages of evidence into comprehensive investigative reports. Um, Mr. Drysdale, can you start by describing for us what the heck is, or was, the National Citizens Inquiry? Because there'll be a, a number of people that have no idea of what the National Citizens Inquiry was.

Ken Drysdale · 3:20:06

The National Citizens Inquiry, and a lot of people just talk about it as the NCI, but the National Citizens Inquiry was a citizens-led citizens-funded, non-judicial investigation into what happened, what was the government's response and efficacy of what they did throughout the COVID years. And so that was kind of our assignment. And that's pretty broad, you know, that's very different than the assignment we have here.

Dean Allison · 3:20:33

And can I, can I just step in and, and, and just share some with the panel? So There's a website, National Citizens Archive, that has all of the videos. And I think people would just be shocked that it looks much like what we're doing here today. Witnesses were sworn in under oath. They were all examined by lawyers and the commissioners were completely independent of administration, which is unusual. So it wasn't a group just, oh, well, let's call witnesses. And the commissioners were tasked with just relying on the evidence. Administration could have nothing to do with them other than, you know, responding to their requests for administrative purposes. And, and they were tasked then, based on the evidence, to basically make positive recommendations on how things could be done differently. So just for example, you know, Irvin Studen, who worked in the Privy Council Office in Canada and Australia, became an expert on the effects on children and education at the end of the pandemic.

Dean Allison · 3:21:44

And he testified and pointed out that while every province shut down the school system, nobody made sure all the kids came back and a large number of children never came back. And he testified about the effects of that. So one of the recommendations is if you ever shut down the schools again, but please don't, Maybe you should track and make sure the kids come back. So it's, it's, it wasn't axe grinding in any way. And, and in every province, all the health officials and health ministers were invited. And when they were in Ottawa, the federal health minister and officials were invited, but there was no subpoena power. So, and I'm sorry, I just interrupted you. Can you share from the commissioner's perspective what the heck this was like and And then I've got a more emotional question for you.