OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) — Canadian Members of Parliament (MPs) and their staff who refused to get the COVID vaccines or did not disclose their injection status will no longer be barred from entry into Canada’s House of Commons.
“By unanimous consent, the #HoC adopted a motion regarding the suspension of measures affecting COVID-19 vaccination during House and committee proceedings, effective Monday, June 20, 2022,” tweeted the official House of Commons last Thursday.
The vote to repeal the ban for unvaccinated MPs and staff from entering the House of Commons was put forward by Liberal MP house leader Mark Holland.
Holland’s motion came in response to the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week announcing a “suspension” of a COVID vaccine mandate for travelers and federally regulated transportation workers starting June 20.
The government also announced that employers in federally regulated “air, rail, and marine sectors will no longer be required to have mandatory vaccination policies in place for employees.”
The federal government also says it is “no longer moving forward with the proposed regulations to make vaccination mandatory in all federally regulated workplaces.”
The lift on the ban comes with the House of Commons only having three sitting days left before it breaks for the summer.
Last fall, Trudeau’s federal government put in place a ban on democratically elected MPs and staff who did not get the COVID vaccines from accessing the nation’s center of democracy, the House of Commons. The rule came into effect on November 22, 2021.
This resulted in at least one public incident where a democratically elected MP was forcibly removed from the House of Commons for not revealing her COVID vaccine status.
Earlier this month, pro-life Conservative Party of Canada Member of Parliament Cathay Wagantall was forcibly removed from the House of Commons after she refused to abide by the rule mandating all MPs have two COVID vaccines or a medical exemptions.
Wagantall had first submitted a medical exemption, which was valid and which the House of Commons nurse had accepted. However, the rules for unvaccinated MPs were recently changed by the Liberals.
CPC MPs and leadership candidates Pierre Poilievre and Leslyn Lewis came to Wagantall’s defense as a result.
Poilievre, regarding Thursday’s vote to remove the ban on unvaccinated MPs from entering the House of Commons, said as reported by True North that “Justin Trudeau has admitted that it’s safe to sit next to an unvaccinated person on a plane or even in the House of Commons.”
However, Poilievre blasted the fact that suspension of the vaccine mandates for travel does not include cross-border truckers.
“He (Trudeau) still won’t let a trucker who sits alone all day in the cab of his truck go back to work by crossing the border,” Poilievre noted.
Unvaccinated Canadians are still mandated to quarantine for two weeks upon entry into Canada, and also must produce a negative COVID test upon entry into Canada.
Despite the vaccine mandate being lifted for MPs, a mask mandate remains in place.