Ontario has started 2021 with a resounding blow against “junk science” after the outcome of a family’s vaccination dispute has left Canadian children better protected from parental misinformation.

The case involved two school-aged children whose parents had separated in 2013. Their father wanted them vaccinated; their mother did not. (None of the family members can be identified by name due to a publication ban surrounding the case.) The conflict went into arbitration with Toronto litigator Herschel Fogelman, which ended in 2018 with a controversial verdict: that it was in the children’s best interests to avoid vaccination.