Connecting, Sharing, & Understanding
The Help Me Understand initiative is a heart-centered project I launched following my testimony at the National Citizen’s Inquiry (NCI) in June 2025. As we move through the summer of 2025, my focus is on supporting those who are ready—perhaps for the first time—to listen to Canadians and others share their experiences and understanding of the COVID-19 environment. We must ask questions about decisions, events, and the impacts we’ve experienced due to the COVID-19 response and outcomes.
“Most importantly, my goal is to help people understand why it still matters to learn about and discuss many pressing issues”.
Why I Testified?
The COVID-19 era began for most global citizens in March 2020. The disarray and disruption we all faced—including a grave assault on our health and well-being—have gone largely unacknowledged and unaddressed in public conversations. In response to the question posed during my testimony at the National Citizen’s Inquiry—“Are Our Children Safe?”—I answered, “No.” Not only in Canada, but globally, we are not yet speaking the truth about the impact and resulting trauma of COVID-19. We must confront the absurd fear and coercion, and we must have real, honest conversations about what was done to us. We cannot heal until we’re told the truth. We cannot begin to trust again until we heal. The purposeful and egregious violation of our right to informed consent—regarding our health, information, decisions, and actions—continues. As a result, we remain at risk. And because we are at risk, so are our children.
The NCI is the most comprehensive effort in Canada to document the COVID-19 response: the decisions, the damages, and the questions. While the truth remains largely undiscussed in the public domain, it is, in fact, being spoken and shared daily through the National Citizen’s Inquiry hearings. In my view, this is the most important initiative in Canada right now.
I also testified because of my background in health science and epidemiology, and the work I had been doing since 2020. My personal health crisis in 2023 was a moment that underscored just how far we’ve drifted from the principles of true informed consent. My health and well-being—and quite conceivably my life—were at risk in March 2023 because my right to informed consent was violated. In that moment, my survival depended entirely on my autonomy and my ability to advocate from my hospital bed while experiencing a serious respiratory episode.
“We are not safe. Our children are not safe. Informed consent, as defined legally and ethically, disappeared in 2020. ”
“Sarena McLean is a Health Science Researcher and Epidemiologist with a Master’s degree who has worked in academia, public health, and as an independent consultant. She testifies about her experiences advocating for informed consent during the COVID-19 pandemic and her personal health crisis in 2023. McLean discusses the importance of empowering individuals to make informed medical decisions and shares her efforts to help people understand complex medical information.
The Expert & Lay Witness
Until that point, I understood all the details intellectually. In my professional career, ethical requirements often fell under my purview—from drafting project ethics applications to reporting research findings responsibly. In 2023, I had to invoke my right to decline a well-documented harmful treatment to protect myself, armed with information I had before arriving at the hospital. Not once did any clinician refer to that information—which was preposterous, yes, but more so, infuriating.
I understood true informed consent both professionally and as a patient. It should have been my clinical team disclosing the risks of the medication they were discussing among themselves—not me, while seriously ill, trying to keep the references straight in my head just in case I needed to defend myself. In that moment, I realized something profound: they should have done better, but they weren’t. And they hadn’t—not since 2020. That led me to conclude that what should happen makes no difference if we remain passive. I had work to do, and my mission became clear: cancel passive informed consent.
I had long known that action was needed. Decisions were made for us without our consent, without clarity, and without accountability. We must begin to recognize coercion for what it is and understand how fear muted our instincts.
After recovering from that experience, I shifted my focus and began curating everything I had done in order to answer the question I assumed would come one day: “Nana, what did you do to help back then?
“In 2023, my life depended not on informed consent, but my own diligence.”
WE MUST CANCEL PASSIVE INFORMED CONSENT!
Sean Hartman was 17 years old in 2021. He was a young active teen who had one love in the world, hockey. As the 2021 season began in Canada, Sean needed a COVID-19 gene therapy vaccine to play. Because in Canada, children 12 years of age and older could get the COVID-19 shot without parental consent nor presence Sean got vaccinated. That day Sean’s Dad, Dan Hartman had no idea the life of his child would last only 33 more days
My testimony addresses that our right to informed consent was obliterated in the COVID-19 Environment. Please join our Journey to Justice and consider donating to help Dan Hartman seek justice for his son and so many other children in Canada. Every amount is appreciated.
