Believe it or not, but British Columbia remains one of the few places that has kept vaccine mandates for public servants. And they are deadly serious about causing as much harm to their remaining unvaccinated employees as possible.
Case in point, a local Prince George newspaper, MYPGNOW, broke this story last week. The story is about a group of new mothers who went on maternity leave prior to the implementation of the vaccine mandates. The Government of British Columbia is demanding they be vaccinated before returning to work. If they miss their return date, they will be terminated and the government wants them to repay the salary they received while on maternity leave, which may be the first time in history the NDP government has shown any sort of fiscal restraint. Oh, and it seems they have to repay the salary within a year.
Yes. BC is the same province whose data showed no statistically significant differences in deaths by vaccination status in their last reading, a trend that was consistent with the even smaller differences in the months before, and absolutely no proof of vaccine efficacy to speak of.
Simply put, there is no policy rationale to keep the mandates in place. Even the provinces own vaccination policy for public servants shows that fact. The questions and answers as to why the policy is in place states:
Throughout the pandemic, the BC Public Service has aligned its response to support the overall provincial pandemic response and has followed the guidance of the Provincial Health Officer (PHO). Implementing the COVID-19 vaccination policy is consistent with that direction and is one additional measure to ensure our workplaces are as safe as possible. We also recognize that we have a role to play in supporting the provincial effort to increase vaccination rates to protect the health of our colleagues and our communities.
While all employees must comply with the policy, some individuals may find doing so personally challenging. All employees are reminded that, regardless of our views on vaccination or this policy, we have an obligation to treat one another with kindness, respect and professionalism and must adhere to our responsibilities under the Standards of Conduct at all times.
The latter point is interesting. I cannot think of a way to frame the government’s continued mandate of a vaccine policy on their employees as anything but arbitrary, malicious, and evil. But more interestingly, the policy states that:
The policy will be in effect until general public health concerns regarding COVID-19 are reduced to a level, prescribed by government, to enable workplaces to operate without COVID-related restrictions.
Which is an interesting statement especially since BC dropped its vaccine passport system on April 8th and according to the government “wearing a mask is a personal choice”. Thus, the “general public health concerns” have obviously been “reduced to a level, prescribed by government, to enable workplaces to operate without COVID-related restrictions”.
And I did notice the policy is silent on whether the vaccines continue to work or not. But the implicit assumption of the policy is that vaccines are effective; thus, the writers of the policy did not feel the need to articulate the fact that the policy only makes sense if that assumption was correct at the time and continues to be correct. Again, the provinces own data shows that it is not effective.
Where is the rationale for maintaining the policy then?
I’ll repeat the answer: there is none.
I just read that article (linked on Twitter). My blood IS boiling. It is outrageous, it truly is. BC has been front and centre with draconian rules (my friend who had a golf membership last year was prohibited from using the clubhouse once the mandates rolled in, and as most may or may not know, even patios were off limits, which is unscientific and punitive). I'd have personally cancelled my golf membership, but she was desperate to get out of her condo (full of mask and vaxx zealots).
My question: who has been incentivized to keep going with this charade. WTF happened to Canada? Yes, I know, the WEF did. But still, I'm raging, and I've only been up for 1 1/2 hours!
Retroactively changing the terms of an agreement. I'm no law-wrangler, but I'm pretty sure there are some kind of internationl agreements being violated here, not to mention constitutional and other legal statutes?