Thought of the Day - October 7 2021 - Canada's Mandate

As you know Canada has been working hard to implement a vaccine mandate. Following the lead of early adopters like Indonesia, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and more recently, for example, New Caledonia ( Thought of the Day - September 22 2021 - New Caledonia Is In Trouble ) has not been easy. Our convoluted political, civil service and legal system continues to trip us up every step of the way.

As you are probably all aware, the Federal Government introduced their first round of mandates yesterday. The first covers Federal employees, and most contractors, but not Crown corporations - “It's very straightforward: If you want to continue to work for the public service of Canada, you're going to need to be fully vaccinated. And the way to ensure that that happens as quickly as possible is to allow for the vast majority of public servants who are vaccinated, to make a simple straightforward attestation… That allows managers and departments to focus in on those people who will not,” Trudeau announcement said.

I love how the word "straightforward" was used twice, as it is anything but. Take for example that although the government was supposed to be keeping track of the vaccine status of all Canadians (heck they publish daily figures), there will now be a new 'attestation system (GC-VATS)' put in place, for people to be able to tell them if they have been vaccinated ( Thought of the Day - May 24 2021 - The Ripple Effect ). And even more shocking, the mandate does not apply to the very people who have legislated it - our Federal MPs!.

The second tranch of the announcement was that at the end of October all travellers 12 or older on a federally regulated plane, train or passenger vessel within Canada must be fully vaccinated or tested (yes, this includes our very-own Rocky Mountaineer ( Thought of the Day - December 8 - Riding the Rails )). By the end of November, the testing option will be withdrawn. That said, there was no update on the implementation of the federal vaccine passport system that will underpin this.

But of course, just to keep things simple, it was also announced that there will be some "extremely narrow exceptions" for example "religious beliefs" and, I would guess, quite probably being an MP!

Cheers

Cliff