Action4Canada - November 03, 2021


B.C. School Boards Vaccine Mandate Developments


Episode Stats

Length

3 minutes

Words per Minute

161.09181

Word Count

541

Sentence Count

40


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Surrey School Board votes against a vaccination mandate for staff in order to keep the schools open and running. What does this mean for the rest of the province? And what does it mean for other school districts still weighing in on the issue?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 It's been debated here in Victoria, Sophie, and all across the province,
00:00:04.320 but ultimately now that Surrey, the largest school district in the province, has made this decision,
00:00:10.680 it will likely push others, and all of this has to come down from advice from provincial health
00:00:16.200 and the impact that a mandate could have on the overall school system.
00:00:21.380 They were prioritized for COVID-19 shots, staff and schools across Surrey.
00:00:26.740 Now, Surrey's school board determining they won't drive more to join the line by requiring those shots.
00:00:34.500 They didn't think there would be a rush to get vaccinated for those that are not vaccinated.
00:00:41.280 Factoring in advice from provincial health, Terry Allen and the board voting to not impose a vaccine mandate for staff.
00:00:48.080 The board announcing 85% of school staff immunized and enacting the mandate would not outweigh the consequences.
00:00:56.740 What's most important is that we keep the schools open for the children.
00:01:03.020 If we lost 5% of our workforce, that's 600 people.
00:01:07.380 So, I mean, it would be a huge negative impact on some classes.
00:01:11.860 New Westminster has also ruled out the mandate.
00:01:14.800 All major unions in the school system support required shots for staff
00:01:19.100 and say the district-by-district approach of decision-making put in by the province is challenging,
00:01:24.480 considering the need for 61 separate legal opinions plus extensive consultation.
00:01:29.700 I think there are just too many hurdles for individual districts to be able to, you know, be able to deal with themselves.
00:01:38.520 School boards are already inundated with all kinds of issues around COVID.
00:01:43.380 To have to deal with this on top of it, I just think it's totally unfair.
00:01:47.700 This is why both the Liberals and the BCTF have been calling for a province-wide mandate,
00:01:53.300 not a community-by-community approach.
00:01:55.780 The B.C. government started the dominoes falling in B.C. in terms of mandating vaccines for its workers.
00:02:02.140 A list now including B.C. Hydro, B.C. Ferries, TransLink, B.C. Transit and ICBC.
00:02:08.260 But there will be no budging on a province-wide policy for schools.
00:02:12.260 I wouldn't expect, for the moment, any other provincial health orders requiring vaccination.
00:02:18.820 As the provincial and federal government move to impose mandates themselves,
00:02:23.520 I think it's hard to explain why some people need to be vaccinated and others don't.
00:02:29.380 Richard, what does this mean for other districts still grappling with the mandate?
00:02:33.260 The sense I got, Sophie, from everyone I spoke to today for this story is this basically ends the conversation.
00:02:41.020 It will be very hard for a school district to put a mandate in place after Surrey has led the charge.
00:02:46.360 We especially have our eyes in those communities where rates of immunization are lower.
00:02:51.580 Dawson Creek, Fort St. John, other areas in the north and in the interior.
00:02:55.840 The challenge for them is if they put in the mandate, it could mean hundreds, if not more, teachers would be told they can't be in the classroom.
00:03:03.380 That would disrupt the school system and cause substantial problems.
00:03:07.640 We're expecting to find out more details on Thursday from Dr. Bonnie Henry when she presents modeling around what transmission looks like in schools.
00:03:15.160 But the province continues to say it is low, and that's also a big factor in different districts making these decisions.