PRINCE GEORGE – “We haven’t that conversation at all.”
That was the response from Mayor Lyn Hall when asked if the City of Prince George would be following suit with the City of Vancouver and, more recently, with the City of Kamloops in mandating vaccinations for civic employees.
In implementing its policy, the City of Vancouver noted: “This new policy is a further step toward limiting the impacts of the virus on our community and aligns with the recommendation from the provincial health officer for large employers to implement vaccine mandates.”
That was Monday.
The following day, the City of Kamloops released the following: “To protect the health and safety of City staff, workplaces, and the public we serve, and to support the efforts of the Province of BC in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, the City of Kamloops announced today that it will be making COVID-19 vaccination a requirement for its employees.”
“We have taken employee and public safety very seriously throughout the pandemic and have followed public health advice and orders as the driver for our operational decisions at the City,” said David Trawin, the City’s Chief Administrative Officer. “We have strongly encouraged our employees to become vaccinated over the past six months, and we feel it is now time to put a policy around those expectations.”
Trawin told CKPG News that the City of Kamloops began looking into mandatory vaccinations around the same time as the federal government mandated full vaccinations for federal employees. He says the decision was completely within the mandate of the municipality, just as any safety measure could be introduced by the municipality.
Mayor Hall says, should the City of Prince George move forward, there’s much work to be done.
“There’s a tremendous amount of work to it,” he says. “When you talk about mandatory vaccinations for any segment of the population, there’s a tremendous amount of consultation that would have to take place. And in our case, it would have to be a lot of consultation with the union. And we have our exempt staff that we would, obviously, want to have a conversation with.”
Some would argue that, as a health issue, the Province should be the deciding body.
Not so, says Councillor Murry Krause.
“It will be within the purview of City Council and the City of Prince George. And I’m looking forward to having that conversation.”
But in the meantime, the fate of vaccinations for civic employees is up in the air.
