Would national vaccine mandates be helpful in Canada?

Key Takeaways:

• According to experts, many reasons for vaccine hesitancy necessitate various solutions rather than a sledgehammer approach.

With European countries turning to mandatory national vaccination regimes to combat record COVID-19 infections. Experts in Canada say that while science also the law may support the Liberal government if it chooses to follow suit, it may not be the panacea public expects.

The first significant challenge to implementing a national mandatory vaccination program for all Canadians is the age-old jurisdictional action between the federal government and the provinces.

The provinces are responsible for providing health care under the Constitution, and a vaccine mandate would fall under that remit. If the federal government needed to take over that responsibility, it would have to use the Emergencies Act or pass legislation authorizing it to act.

Behiels believes that if the federal government goes this route, it will likely win any legal challenge. As long as it can show that the rate of infection, death rate, and ongoing mutations are creating a threat that only a national response can mitigate.

Even if he wins, he predicts a backlash from provincial governments who see the move as unnecessary at this pandemic stage.

“There hasn’t been a need to consider it in Canada up until now,” Dr. Allison McGeer, an infectious illness specialist at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital, told News.

“People who are white, wealthy, well-educated, and born in Canada have much more faith in the public health system and are much more willing to believe their government, so we have higher vaccination rates,” McGeer explained.

“Racialized communities, who are already at a significantly higher risk of contracting COVID, are the very people who have the most difficulty deciding to get vaccinated, and for a good reason.”

“Vaccine mandates are systemically inequitable, also you can work to mitigate it, but you can’t fix it,” she added.

Source: CBC News

Get Nunavut and Canada’s top News, Latest news and other News of the world only at most trustable news website of Canada Nunavut post.com