British Columbia’s Court of Appeal has overturned a victory favouring union workers who challenged Purolator’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate, prioritizing employer rights over individual rights and bodily autonomy.

In September of 2021, Purolator announced that all employees must be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 by the following January. Those who refused were to be put on unpaid leave or fired, with clear disregard for the medical, religious or personal reason behind their decision.

Teamsters Local 31 stood behind their members, taking the case to arbitration. In November 2022, Arbitrator Nicholas Glass ruled that the mandate became unreasonable after June 30th of that year. He justified his decision, explaining that covid variants (such as Omicron) made the original vaccines “effectively useless” in stopping the spread of infection therefore, continuing to force vaccinations on employees did nothing to improve workplace safety.

Glass ordered Purolator to pay lost wages and benefits for those still affected between July 2022 and May 2023, upholding each employee’s right to bodily autonomy.

Purolator appealed the decision through the BC Supreme Court where the ruling was fully upheld, affirming the understanding that mandates cannot impede personal freedoms without a legitimate reason.

Purolator again challenged the decision through the BC Court of Appeal where, on January 9th, a unanimous decision reversed everything.

Appeal Court Justices Robert Harris, Suzanne DeWitt-Van Oosten, and Richard Edelmann unanimously determined that the arbitrator had been wrong to probe into the science, stating that mandates should be judged “reasonable” based on the uncertainty of the pandemic and advice from public health officials (Bonnie Henry) at the time, even if the science was questionable.

Rather than ruling on the vaccine mandate, or the scientific basis for it, they ruled on ‘the criteria for concluding whether Purolator was justified in enforcing the mandate at the time’.

In short, they have decided that the advice provided by health officials and bureaucrats, even when proven wrong and without regard for their scientific culpability, should take precedence over fact and carry more weight in their decision.

Without further appeal, this reversal effectively sends the case back to arbitration, clawing back the compensation provided and ignoring the effect these mandates had on the lives of these workers. There has, at this point, been no indication from the union or employees, expressing a desire to appeal through the Labour Relations Board.

This abysmal ruling further demonstrates the continued erosion of the rights and freedoms we have always known and enjoyed as Canadians. We now know that the pandemic was not the emergency it was made out to be, nor was the vaccine the ‘cure’ it was touted to be.

The injuries caused by the covid vaccines and mandates, whether physical, emotional or financial, are still being exposed and experienced. Meanwhile, our courts appear to be saying that it’s ok, because those that did this to us meant well at the time.

We will not stop fighting for our Charter and for Canadians.

Speak up and let those we’ve elected to carry our voices forward know, without a doubt, that we as Canadians deserve each and every one of these rights and freedoms, as they were intended.