August 4, 2021 - QP Briefing

‘It changed everything’: Pandemic prompts science table adviser to seek Ontario Liberal Party nomination

Nathan Stall, a member of the province's COVID-19 science advisory table, is taking the leap into politics, seeking the Ontario Liberal Party nomination in Toronto–St. Paul's.

The pandemic changed everything for the people Stall cares for — he's a geriatrician with the Sinai Health System and older adults have borne the brunt of the virus.

In the early days of the pandemic, he authored groundbreaking research on the cause of catastrophic outbreaks in Ontario's long-term care homes that tied the tendency for bigger, deadlier outbreaks to occur in for-profit homes to their overcrowded outdated infrastructure, which influenced government policy.

He became a member of the province's science advisory table and a public advocate for older people, speaking out in the media about how the Ontario government and society at large were failing them.

"And it changed everything for me personally, seeing that I could be out there publicly advocating for something and advising, and trying to exact change and to protect vulnerable individuals," Stall told QP Briefing. "And that's something that I see coming out of this, the greatest opportunity for me to further that work as a public office. And that's why I've decided to do this."