Thursday, February 25, 2021

To Vaccinate or Not

While its deployment is slower than what anyone would prefer, we now know that all Ontario front-line long term care and hospital workers are included in Phase 1 of the province’s vaccination plan

By Ian DeWaard, Ontario Director

Due to a delay in supply of both Moderna’s and Pfizer’s vaccine supplies, the province shifted its priority focus to vaccinating residents and staff in long term care (LTC), high-risk retirement homes, and First Nations elder care home residents.

As of February 16, the province had announced that all LTC residents had received their first dose, and that it was preparing for delivery to retirement homes staff and residents.

There are many questions about the vaccine’s efficacy against virus transfer and whether vaccinations will be mandatory for healthcare workers. The province is providing regular daily updates on vaccinations issued so far, and also trying to ease concerns that people have about the vaccination through public education.

CLAC recently polled members about the COVID-19 vaccine to determine the areas that concern them the most.

Most respondents (58%) said they have been vaccinated or that they plan to get vaccinated.

Of the remaining respondents, 24% are undecided.

18% said they would not get vaccinated.

Of those CLAC members who are undecided about whether they’ll get the vaccine, most say it’s because they don’t have enough information.

These numbers align with other surveys of Canadians. Angus Reid polling, released January 11, indicated that only 3 in 5 or 60 per cent of Canadians say they will get the vaccine as soon as they can.

It seems that for many, there are still more questions than answers, but it’s expected that as the vaccine is more widely distributed throughout the population, that willingness to be vaccinated will increase.

An interesting question—and one that will surely be the subject of much debate in the coming months—is what employers can reasonably do when workers cannot be, or choose not to be, vaccinated.

Most survey respondents in CLAC’s poll believe that workers who choose not to be vaccinated should be made to wear personal protective equipment all the time and take part in more frequent testing. More than one-fifth of CLAC’s survey respondents believe that no action should be taken for those who decline the vaccine and that this should strictly be a matter of personal choice.

While vaccinations will likely be voluntary for most Canadians, will workers in high-risk environments be treated differently?

There are increasing calls for the provinces and territories to set the rules, rather than leave it to employers to design on their own. Legal commentators believe that employers can mandate vaccination, but that there is no consensus on whether a worker who refuses can be disciplined or put on administrative leave.

An article recently published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal by authors Colleen Flood, Bryan Thomas, and Dr. Kumanan Wilson calls on the provinces and territories to set clear and consistent rules for healthcare workers, rather than leave it to individual employers to design. They argue that such rules would be permissible and that this would not be a violation of healthcare workers’ charter rights.

In a recent arbitration case about mandatory testing, arbitrator Dana Randall found that because COVID-19 is a rampant and worldwide pandemic, it was permissible for the operator of a retirement home to implement a policy that makes biweekly COVID-19 testing mandatory for staff, even though residents and guests were not (at the time of the grievance) being required to test.

Will this ruling about mandatory nasopharyngeal testing serve as the basis for future rulings on mandatory vaccination for healthcare workers? It’s too early to tell exactly how arbitrators and public opinion will develop around mandatory vaccination, but CLAC continues to monitor the situation very closely and will be sure that members and stewards are kept informed as the law develops.

To Vaccinate or Not

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