Canadian PM wants Covid-19 vaccination to be mandatory for all govt employees

As the Canadian province of Quebec announced that it will introduce Covid-19 “vaccine passports”, the country’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau supported the move and said he’s exploring the idea of making it compulsory for all government employees to get a jab against the disease.

Saying that there were “no more excuses” for not getting vaccinated against Covid-19, Trudeau revealed that he has already asked Canada’s senior-most bureaucrat, the clerk of the privy council, to consider his plan for mandating vaccination of government workers.

“We need to get vaccinated to get through this pandemic, particularly with all the real concerns around the Delta variant we are facing that is striking hardest, obviously, in under-vaccinated and non-vaccinated people,” Trudeau said.

He added that his administration was looking at government-regulated workplaces “to encourage or perhaps even to mandate vaccinations for those industries”.

According to an estimate by the news outlet Global News, such a mandate would apply to nearly 1.3 million government employees.

The Canadian PM said getting vaccinated against the coronavirus disease was “no longer a matter of individual choice” but of protecting “the community and our children who haven’t had the opportunity to be vaccinated”.

According to latest data from Health Canada, about 64% per cent of the eligible population is fully vaccinated, while over 80% has received one dose.

The provincial government of Quebec had earlier floated the possibility of so-called “vaccine passports” within its jurisdiction, and on Thursday, its premier Francois Legault announced that they will be introduced soon to make non-essential services such as going to restaurants or using gyms only available to those who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

Canada has recorded a week-on-week 50% increase in the number of new Covid-19 cases, with 1,036 reported on Thursday. This surge is driven by the highly-transmissible Delta variant of the virus, and health authorities say the new spike can only be countered by speeding up vaccination rates.

Speaking at an event in Montreal, Legault said the passport measure was meant to allow those fully jabbed to have “a somewhat normal life”.