POWELL RIVER, British Columbia (LifeSiteNews) — A Canadian provincial Supreme Court judge has ruled that lawyers are not allowed to ask potential jurors if they have received COVID-19 vaccinations.
Crown prosecutors had sought permission to request that the vaccination status of individual jurors be made known to the public as part of a given trial. According the Canadian Blacklock’s Reporter, the Justice who oversaw the ruling, Geoffrey Gomery, stated that the request was not acceptable because the issue was “private and personal.”
Gomery wrote that “panelists might well have reasons to wish not to discuss their vaccination status in public in the intimidating environment of a courtroom.” In the estimation of the judge, disclosing personal medical information is inappropriate.
According to the judge, courts have taken what health officials consider the necessary precautions to avoid a COVID-19 outbreak. Various measures have been put in place, including distancing measures and plastic dividers.
Gomery stated that “until quite recently it could be assumed most jurors were unvaccinated,” and that he cannot recall a single outbreak “that has been traced to the conduct of a criminal or civil trial.”
The judge not only mentioned the fact that the risk for jurors is negligible, but also that if a panelist worried about the risk of fulfilling jury duty given the precautionary measures already in place, he “would have excused them in any event.”
At the time of the publication of Justice Gomery’s statements, it was not yet the case that federal agency had mandated the COVID-19 vaccine for employees. That changed on Friday, August 13, when Canada’s Transport Minister Omar Alghabra declared that all federal workers will be required to be jabbed by October. Even travelers who are not employees will be expected to be vaccinated or produce a negative test, in order to travel with the country of Canada by air or any other interprovincial travel mechanism regulated by the federal transportation authority.
Conservative candidate Erin O’Toole has expressed his opposition to mandated vaccines for domestic Canadian travelers. He said, “vaccines are not a political issue. To try and make them one is dangerous and irresponsible.”
However, O’Toole has also said prefers a regular rapid testing regime to keep workplaces safe from COVID-19. O’Toole believes that vaccine mandates are not acceptable, but that Canadians who choose not to take the vaccine will still need to participate in some sort of testing procedure in order to travel the country by way of a federally regulated industry.
This is not the first time that a government-regulated industry has been told it must comply with a vaccination requirement from Public Health. In 2018, the Ontario Nurses’ Association won a decision on the controversial vaccinate or mask policy, striking down the policy in effect at St. Michael’s Hospital and several other hospitals that form the Toronto Academic Health Science Network. Nurses could have been forced to don a mask if they chose not to vaccinate.
A similar case was won for Ontario nurses in 2015, as well. The arbitrator of the 2015 decision stated that “the mask requirement amounts to compulsory disclosure of personal medical information.”
Consistent in each decision, as well as in the recent decision by Justice Gomery, is that the medical privacy of the individual is reason enough to reconsider mandating vaccines for government employees, including jurors.
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