On September 2, 2026, the National Post published Sharon Kirkey’s report on Dr. Michael Hart, the London, Ontario family physician suspended for six months by the Ontario Physicians and Surgeons Discipline Tribunal over his ketamine prescribing and for asking patients to sign a document promising never to sue him or complain about him to the College. Paul was quoted in the article as an independent commentator, not as counsel in the matter, and the Post linked to the case comment published here last month on CPSO v Hart.
The article and the journalist
Sharon Kirkey writes on health and medicine for the National Post. Her September 2 piece ran under the headline “Ketamine-prescribing Ontario doctor suspended after asking patients to waive their right to sue him,” and it puts a single document at the centre of a much broader discipline record: a form, handed to patients before treatment began, in which they agreed not to take legal action against the physician or his clinic and not to make a complaint of any kind to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.
What the article reports
The Post reports that Dr. Hart, a past guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast who was profiled locally as the first family doctor in London to prescribe medical cannabis, was the sole owner and only practising physician at the ReadyToGo Clinic. The discipline proceeding grew out of complaints by two patients and a review of 34 further charts by two independent assessors, who found what the Tribunal described as multiple deficiencies in assessment, consent, patient education, dosing and record keeping.
Both complainants were treated entirely by telephone. Patient A, seeking help for anxiety and depression in 2022, was prescribed ketamine after a first phone consultation and, on the article’s account, experienced side effects she described as horrific and scary, including loss of balance, slurred speech, a racing heart and dissociation that lasted until she went to bed that night. Follow-up was a single phone call two weeks later, during which the Tribunal found Dr. Hart repeatedly pressed her not to complain to the College or take action against him. Patient B, treated in 2020 and 2021 on a referral for ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, was asked to sign the same release, was moved to a higher dose and then to at-home ketamine without an addiction risk assessment, and was yelled at during an appointment for calling from a car. The Post also reports that the referring therapist, whom Dr. Hart recorded as “Dr.” despite knowing she held no doctorate in clinical psychology, has since had her own licence revoked by the College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario.
On the penalty, the article explains what the Tribunal itself emphasized: the six-month suspension, effective July 8, and the permanent prohibition on prescribing ketamine or testosterone replacement therapy were the product of a joint submission by the College and the physician, which a tribunal must accept unless the proposal is unhinged from the circumstances. Dr. Hart pleaded no contest, which the Tribunal treated as saving costs and sparing witnesses, while noting that, unlike an admission, it showed neither insight nor remorse. The Post reports that the College’s public records show six prior cautions from the Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committee, including over social media posts on gender-affirming care and COVID-19. The Tribunal’s reasons record eight cautions between 2016 and 2023 on subjects including record keeping, telemedicine and long-term prescribing of dependency-producing medications. Whatever the count, the Tribunal’s point stands: several of the obligations he had already been reminded of were the ones at issue in this case, and misconduct that follows warnings is more serious for it.
In a statement to the Post, the College explained that the complaints committee can make a range of dispositions, some remedial, but does not make findings of professional misconduct; matters that require findings on disputed facts are referred to the discipline tribunal. The article quotes the case comment published here on the limits of that model: progressive regulation only protects patients if the physician on the receiving end responds to it, and the Hart file shows how long a practice can continue substantially unchanged while the warnings accumulate. A lawyer who represented Dr. Hart declined to comment, and Dr. Hart did not respond to the Post before deadline.
What I told the National Post
The part of the record that stopped me was the release. I have been practising medical malpractice litigation for over 20 years and I have never come across a document like it: a form given to patients before their first appointment asking them to promise never to file a lawsuit or a complaint with the physician’s regulator.
As I told the Post, waivers exist. You see them signed before a dangerous sport or a recreational activity, where a participant accepts a known risk in exchange for taking part. But medicine? It just did not seem right. That is an alarm bell. It is not what happens, or should happen, in our health system at all, and it is worth letting the public know that.
The Tribunal agreed, and went further than simply treating the form as unenforceable. It found that asking patients to sign it, and then pressing Patient A not to complain, was in itself disgraceful, dishonourable and unprofessional conduct. Physicians may not hinder the College’s regulation of the profession in the public interest by discouraging complaints. A patient’s right to complain to the College is a statutory right, and no clinic intake form can remove it.
Consent forms are not waivers
A reasonable reader might object that patients sign forms before every operation and every anesthetic, so what does it mean to say there are no waivers in medicine? The answer is that a surgical consent form and the Hart release are different documents doing different things. A consent form records that the material risks of a procedure were explained and that the patient agreed to proceed knowing them. It is evidence on the question of informed consent, and it protects a physician against a claim that the patient never agreed to the procedure or its known risks. It does not, and cannot, protect a physician against a claim that the procedure was performed negligently. A patient who consents to an appendectomy has not consented to having the wrong structure cut.
The Hart form was not about risk disclosure at all. It was a promise, extracted before any care was given, not to take legal action and not to complain to the regulator, regardless of what happened next. Whether a release signed in advance could ever bar a civil negligence claim against a health professional is a separate question with its own body of law, and I have written about how courts approach the enforceability of waivers in the personal injury context. Nothing in this decision resolves that question. What the decision establishes is narrower and, for patients, more useful: presenting the document at all is conduct the regulator will discipline. If you have ever been handed a form like this, it did not work, and the decision whether to complain to the CPSO remains entirely yours.
Discipline protects the public; it does not compensate the patient
It is worth repeating what a College proceeding can and cannot do, because families often expect more from it than it is designed to deliver. A discipline proceeding governs a physician’s right to practise. It suspends, restricts, supervises and, where necessary, revokes. It puts no money in the hands of anyone who was harmed. Patient A and Patient B received no damages from this proceeding, and the findings, though detailed, are findings about the standard of practice rather than findings that any particular injury was caused by the care. Patients who want to understand the complaint route can start with a patient’s guide to making complaints about health care in Ontario.
Compensation comes, if at all, through a separate civil claim with a different and heavier burden. A plaintiff must prove, with independent expert evidence, that the care fell below the standard of care and that the breach caused the injury. A discipline finding is a signal that something went wrong and often the first clear public account of what it was, but it does not establish civil liability and it does not prove causation. The Hart record, with expert opinion across 34 charts, is a good illustration of how much a discipline file can reveal and how little of it converts automatically into a damages award.
The findings and penalty in CPSO v Hart are matters of public record and are examined in the case comment linked above. Other details set out here are as reported by the National Post and, where noted, remain reported statements rather than findings. The full report by Sharon Kirkey is available at the National Post.
