Canada will place unvaccinated federal employees on unpaid leave and require COVID-19 shots for air, train, and ship passengers, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Wednesday, as he unveiled one of the world’s strictest vaccine mandate policies.
CBC Canada is reporting that all public servants either get their shots by month’s end or be forced into an unpaid leave of absence. All travelers must also be fully vaccinated by October 30 before boarding planes, trains, or marine vessels.
Taking account of the stalled vaccination rates, all federal employees in the “core public administration” and the RCMP are to be fully vaccinated or apply for a medical or religious exemption by the end of the month.
And this mandate includes all federal contractors. As an example, cleaning staff must be fully vaccinated to gain access to government buildings. The estimated 267,000 employees covered by this policy must report their vaccination status by Oct. 29.
A senior official said these employees will not qualify for employment insurance (EI) benefits. The government’s new vaccine mandates were a cornerstone pledge by Trudeau during his campaign for re-election last month.
“These travel measures, along with mandatory vaccination for federal employees, are some of the strongest in the world because when it comes to keeping you and your family safe when it comes to avoiding lockdowns for everyone, this is no time for half measures,” Trudeau said, according to Reuters.
Canada versus the United States over vaccination mandates
Even though Canada may now have some of the strictest mandates requiring vaccination against COVID-19, the country has also fully vaccinated more than 80 percent of its eligible population ages 12 and over.
The United States said last month most federal employees must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 no later than Nov. 22, while federal contractors must be vaccinated by Dec. 8. The U.S. government also is drafting rules to require large employers to have their workers inoculated or tested weekly.
The mandate for federal employees is likely to be challenged in court, said Daniel Lublin, a Toronto-based employment lawyer. “There will be claims,” Lublin said, noting that unpaid leave could be challenged as effective termination or unjust dismissal.
Employment lawyer Lior Samfiru, a partner with Samfiru Tumarkin LLP, said in an interview with CTV News Canada, “We’ve been contacted by thousands of people from across Canada who all have these ultimatums in front of them saying they have to be vaccinated by a certain date or risk losing their jobs.”
“We’re going to see the biggest wave of terminations we’ve seen since the pandemic started,” he said,
Basically, it all boils down to a situation pitting the rights of individual workers and ensuring employers meet their health and safety obligations toward staff, clients, and the public. This situation is already going through the legal channels, right up to the Supreme Court in the United States.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor late Friday refused to block an order requiring New York teachers to have at least one Covid vaccine dose before returning to the classroom Monday.
The U.S. Supreme Court has been fairly consistent when it comes to vaccinations, finding that mandatory vaccinations are constitutional. When one has to balance constitutional liberties, the Supreme Court has typically decided that the government’s duty to safeguard the health of its citizens, takes priority over some individual rights.
So it looks like Canada’s highest court will have a say in the vaccination dilemma.
