(LifeSiteNews) — The British Columbia Nurses Union (BCNU) warned that government COVID jab mandates for healthcare workers will “force members” to leave and further exacerbate already existing staff shortages in the province.
“In response to the government’s announcement on September 13 of its plans to extend the mandatory vaccination order to all health-care workers, yesterday BCNU expressed its support for vaccination while raising concerns that consequences to this order could contribute to the severe nurse shortage in this province,” reads a September 15 press release from the BCNU.
“BCNU strongly supports vaccination and evidence-based decision-making. At a time when the union is imploring with health employers to improve staffing levels across this province, we are concerned that the mandatory nature of the vaccination strategy will force members to leave, further exacerbating a staffing shortage that is increasingly unmanageable.”
On September 13, British Columbia’s Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry and Health Minister Adrian Dix announced that all healthcare workers had to have COVID jabs by October 26.
The BCNU wrote in its press release that the percentage of those who are not jabbed is “not distributed evenly across the province.”
“This reality can pose desperate staffing challenges in worksites where staffing is already stretched extremely thin,” says BCNU.
The BCNU then said the government has not provided transparency “regarding operational and contingency planning to support this new public health order,” and that without a solid plan, workplace disruptions are inevitable.
“Without these plans in place, there is potential for a significant number of health-care workers to be removed from an already depleted workforce. Taking nurses away from the bedside will have serious impacts on patient care,” says BCNU.
On Monday, the president of the BCNU Christine Sorensen suddenly resigned.
Current vice-president of BCNU Aman Grewal said that around 20 percent of workers are choosing not to get jabbed.
According to Grewal, among the reasons for refusing the shots are being pregnant, breastfeeding, or “not comfortable with the vaccine” safety.
“They say they have read the science, but they are not satisfied with the science that is out,” said Grewal as reported by CityNews 1130.
Grewal noted that the long-term effects have not been “determined yet because this is such a new situation that we are faced with.”
Last week, Grewal said while she supports the COVID jabs and encourages all nurses to get them, the union is not in a “position to support an order which will serve to remove even a single nurse or other health care worker from the health care system at a time of severe crisis.”
“It’s just not something that we can do,” said Grewal.
The province’s vaccine passport has been in effect since September 13 and has been met with strong opposition from many businesses.
A private Facebook group called BC Businesses Against Health Pass currently has nearly 134,000 members; it quickly gained a large following after going live on August 24.
Thousands of people in many cities across British Columbia have taken to the streets in recent weeks to protest COVID vaccine passports and the mandatory vaccination of healthcare workers.
The “Worldwide Walkout Health Freedom” rally was organized by Canadian Frontline Nurses, a group recently formed to protest against COVID lockdowns and jab mandates, and saw well over 10,000 participate in Vancouver alone.
Provincial governments across Canada have begun to reintroduce COVID-19 restrictions, blaming a fourth wave of the virus on the Delta variant and the unvaccinated.
As is now widely known, people who have taken the experimental COVID-19 jabs can still contract and spread the disease. COVID vaccine trials have never produced evidence that vaccines stop infection or transmission. They do not even claim to reduce hospitalization, but the measurement of success is in preventing severe symptoms of COVID-19.
The COVID-19 injections approved for emergency use in Canada, including the Pfizer jab for ages 12 and up, all have connections to cells derived from aborted babies.
All four have also been associated with possible severe side effects such as blood clots, rashes, miscarriages, and even heart attacks in young, healthy men.
The list of FDA-recognized adverse events has grown from severe anaphylactic reactions to include fatal thrombotic events, the inflammatory heart condition myocarditis, and neurologically disabling diseases like Guillain Barré Syndrome. Meanwhile, the CDC reported a COVID-19 infection survival rate of greater than 99.95% for those under age 50.
In July, Dr. Charles Hoffe of British Columbia warned that the worst is “yet to come” due to potential “permanent” damage caused by the injections.
LifeSiteNews has put together a resource guide called “How to resist COVID jab mandates in Canada — a comprehensive guide.”
LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here.