B.C. teachers doubt province will follow Ontario’s school staff vaccine mandate

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — The head of the BC Teachers’ Federation says educators in this province would not oppose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for school staff, like Ontario is implementing, but they aren’t holding their breath.

“We had to push for six months to get something as simple as a mask mandate last year. So, I do not think that the provincial health office is susceptible to pressure from unions — or perhaps anyone,” said BCTF president Teri Mooring.

Meantime, the superintendent of B.C.’s biggest school district, Surrey’s Jordan Tinney, is optimistic it won’t come to needing a mandate for staff.

“As a superintendent, I believe that there’s pressure on people right now to get vaccinated,” he says, adding he thinks it’s prudent to wait and see if vaccine passport nudges immunization rates where they need to be.

“We’re still literally just opening. So everything for us right now is counting students staffing, schools, making sure everything’s good. So the questions around vaccines and where that will take us, we’ll probably be two or three weeks away once we’re into routines once we start to see where the pandemic takes us in the fall.”

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Tinney adds it’s possible a staff mandate may not prove necessary because of the vaccine passport.

“I think the pressure’s there and I’m sure we’ll see the vaccine numbers climb and then we’ll see what the pandemic does.”

Whether or not a decision gets made, Mooring adds it’s not the BCTF’s role to push for a vaccine mandate.

“That is the employer’s role. That is the government’s role. That is the role of public health in the discerning where those mandates need to lie,” she said.

At any rate, according to Mooring, the union would first want to see current data about cases in schools, which was provided last year but is not currently available.

B.C.’s top doctor says mandates must be proportionate to risk, maintaining that is currently in health care but not in schools.

Toronto is the first Ontario school district to set its vaccination deadline for staff. Starting Nov. 1, teachers will need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or undergo regular rapid testing.