Liberals Want Mandatory Vaccines in Crown Corporations and “Federally Regulated Workspaces”

After more than two weeks of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party not having a platform, despite being the party that called the election, they have finally released it and their vaccine mandate policy has gotten more radical than Trudeau’s public statements had been indicating.

Before Trudeau had been pushing a vaccine mandate for all federal employees which he wouldn’t even fully commit to when asked if unvaccinated federal employees would be under threat of having their employment terminated. 

Now Trudeau is not only pushing for mandatory vaccines for federal employees and people wishing to travel on a plane or train, but now he is also indicating he would mandate vaccines, directly or indirectly, for everyone working for a Crown corporation or “federally regulated workplaces” (seen on page 11).

The Liberals seem to be trying to make the language vague by saying that they want to “ensure vaccination is prioritized for workers” but this point of their platform is under the heading “Mandatory Vaccination”. This seems to imply that prioritizing vaccinations in Crown corporations or “federally regulated workplaces” would be something the government would be pushing businesses to privately implement. 

The scope of this policy would be quite wide as lots of industries in Canada are federally regulated like telecommunications, radio and television, and even banks. 

The government with the Liberals implementing policies pressuring companies to mandate vaccines could even push it on private businesses because part of the definition of a federally regulated workplace includes “any business that is vital, essential or integral to the operation of one of the above activities”. This means any business could be arbitrarily redefined to be “integral” if the government wanted to cram down a vaccine mandate on them or use their regulatory powers to pressure them into it. 

The COVID-19 vaccine is not inherently bad (heck the person writing this article is fully vaccinated) but it is absolutely wrong and blatantly unconstitutional in Canada to be mandating people to take any sort of medication or treatment, especially without proof that the unvaccinated pose significant danger to those who have been vaccinated. 

It is strange to think that currently both the federal Liberal Party and the NDP are running on a vaccine policy that would automatically get challenged in court and they do not seem to care. Regardless of what some people’s outsized fears of the vaccine may be, the actual danger in this situation is the undermining of the importance of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Bill of Rights in a paranoid attempt to make sure everyone gets vaccinated. 

Since Justin Trudeau has had to walk back part of his vaccinate mandate for federal employees after being questioned about it by the media, it will be interesting to see if the media asks questions about Trudeau’s Crown corporations and “federally regulated workplace” addition to his vaccine policy, whether or not he will also walk that back due to bad optics.