Canadian Society
for Science & Ethics in Medicine

The CSSEM response - Dr. Ben Turner, President

The Society notes, with mixed impressions, the long-delayed abolition of British Columbia's unscientific and unethical COVID vaccine mandate for hospital-based workers. While this news is welcome, it is far too early for celebration for several reasons:

A. It is not clear that fired health care workers will be rehired.

     1. The Provincial Health Officer has no direct influence on hiring ... only the ability to invoke mandates that slammed the door on a large group of people during a several-years-long declared "emergency". Hiring is done by the health authorities. It costs her nothing to say that displaced workers are welcome to apply for their jobs again ... she doesn't have the authority to give the jobs back even if she wanted to.

     2. It gets much worse for displaced HCW's. A three year absence from relevant work is a nearly insurmountable obstacle to being rehired or maintaining a professional license. Those who have been working in other jurisdictions without a vaxx mandate (almost everywhere else in the world at this point) can account for this time BUT those who chose to stay in BC (for family reasons, for example) may never work in their fields of expertise ever again (unless further measures are introduced to mitigate this problem).

B. The government announced a new provincial registry of private health information for hospital workers.

     1. The Health Minister tried to pass this off as just a "streamlining" of existing data collection already undertaken by the various health authorities. This is, of course, far from the truth. There is a world of difference between having one's health information held by an employer versus being held by the government. While the former is commonplace in the medical field (though due for a critical review in my opinion), we know of no precedent for the latter.

     2. This brings into focus the question of ANY automatic collection of personal health information. The ethics here are simple: no one should have your health information without your consent. Consent can be reasonably assumed for people who are directly involved in providing medical care, but not for everyone else or for any other purpose.

C. Legislation on the fly.

     1. During the last 4 years, It was the practice in many places to speak as if one could "legislate by press conference". Although the 'emergency' that appeared to justify this approach is now suddenly over, this approach has not changed. Minister Dix said that he would be bringing a regulation to Cabinet "after work has been done"; this regulation would require the reporting of vaccination status. In the very next sentence, he announced - without any legal instrument - that reporting requirements would come into effect on that same day. This is not how laws should be made in any country with the basic of respect for the law itself.​

     2. While the vaccination mandate was patently against the available science on the day that it was imposed, it has become more anti-science during every one of the 33 months that have passed since that day. BC is one of the very last jurisdictions in the world to bow to this scientific reality - and that 'bow' looks much more like the politically-motivated and grudging 'nod' of a sore loser. Our work at CSSEM on behalf of health care workers in BC in far from over. History shows us that once a government takes freedoms away it is very difficult to get them back. We will update this site as more information becomes available.

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Benjamin Turner, MD, MA, FRCSC, CSSEM President