Alberta’s post secondary schools saying no to mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations

Alberta’s post secondary schools saying no to mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations

University of Calgary reports record number of first-year students living on campus. Many Alberta post-secondary schools are not requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for students and staff even as others across the country are making different choices. The University of Calgary , University of Alberta , Mount Royal University in Calgary, […]

Many Alberta post-secondary schools are not requiring COVID-19 vaccinations for students and staff even as others across the country are making different choices.

The University of Calgary, University of Alberta, Mount Royal University in Calgary, the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and it’s northern counterpart say they will strongly encourage vaccination but won’t go so far as to mandate it.

The schools’ decisions come as Alberta sees a spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. Over the last three days, 1,407 new cases were identified to bring the active case count to 5,354.

There were 161 people in hospital on Monday, including 43 in intensive care — jumps of nine and six, respectively, since Thursday.

Lorian Hardcastle, a University of Calgary professor who specializes in health law and policy, said there are overlapping concerns that threaten the safety of students and staff if stronger measures are not brought into post-secondary environments.

Hardcastle is one of 21 members of the university’s law faculty who penned a letter to leadership asking for mandatory masking and vaccine requirements for the upcoming school year.

Aerosol transmission of COVID-19, lower vaccination rates among Albertans in their 20s, the highly contagious Delta variant and easing of all provincial health restrictions — currently on pause until mid-September — are among Hardcastle’s list of concerns.

She said the decision by Alberta post-secondary institutions to opt-out of mandating vaccines “must be political in nature,” considering schools in other provinces are doing the opposite.

“The main legal argument that comes up against mandatory vaccine is the charter. It’s not actually clear the charter applies to universities, or to this particular university decision,” Hardcastle said.

“There doesn’t seem to be much of a legal barrier as long as universities design a vaccination program that complies with provincial human rights law, so (it) accommodates people who can’t get vaccinated.”

While a school-wide vaccine requirement is still a novel concept, Hardcastle said lesser precedents already exist.

Dental and clinical students, for example, must be vaccinated against certain diseases, she said.

Mount Royal University has said that “provincial and federal legal landscapes” would make it challenging to implement a vaccine directive due to disclosure of personal health information.

In an updated statement Monday, the university said: “There are many signs of change when it comes to requirements for people to disclose and/or be vaccinated. We will continue to monitor and assess these changes.”

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C. Noble

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