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April 30, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he needs time to “reflect” about the possibility of making a coronavirus vaccine mandatory in Canada, if and when it becomes available.
In speaking with reporters at his daily press conference on Tuesday, Trudeau was asked whether a coronavirus vaccine would be made mandatory. He replied that there is still time to “reflect” on this topic in order to get it “right.”
“We are still, unfortunately, a long way from having a vaccine. Just finding the vaccine is the first step, the next step will be producing the vaccines in sufficient numbers to inoculate everyone, or almost everyone, that is something that we are preparing already,” Trudeau said.
“As to what sort of vaccination protocols will be in place, we still have a fair bit of time to reflect on that in order to get it right.”
Ted Kuntz, president of Vaccine Choice Canada (VCC), a not-for-profit society founded by families who have suffered from vaccine reactions or injuries, told LifeSiteNews that any type of forced vaccination is “morally repugnant” and unconstitutional.
“When asked if a CV 19 vaccine might become mandatory for Canadians, Trudeau has repeatedly failed to take such an egregious violation of our constitutional rights and freedoms ‘off the table.’ This is unacceptable,” Kuntz said to LifeSiteNews.
“Any consideration of imposing a medical product by force or coercion which carries the risk of permanent injury and death and for which neither the government nor the vaccine manufacturer is legally liable is ethically and morally repugnant.”
In his Tuesday press conference, Trudeau said high vaccination rates for coronavirus will be essential when one becomes available. He added that vaccines are “extremely important to getting back to normal” post coronavirus.
In Canada, vaccines are not mandatory at the federal level as each province is responsible for their healthcare delivery. At the provincial level, some provinces such as Ontario and New Brunswick have made certain vaccines mandatory via legislation, with a few exceptions, for children to attend public schools.
In British Columbia, parents now must provide their child’s immunization records for their kids to be enrolled in public and private schools.
Adrian Dix, the Minister of Health for the province of British Columbia, recently said that a coronavirus vaccine will not be made mandatory in his province. He did, however, say that students at schools in the province who have not been immunized will have to disclose that they refused a vaccine.
In early April, Trudeau said life in Canada would not be able to return to “normal” until a coronavirus vaccine is found.
“We will not be coming back to our former normal situation; we can’t do that until we have developed a vaccine and that could take 12 to 18 months,” Trudeau said to reporters.
“We don’t exactly know how long — we hope it’s earlier rather than later.”
A recent poll conducted by Leger Marketing and the Association for Canadian Studies shows that 60 percent of Canadians back a mandatory coronavirus vaccine with 40 percent saying it should be voluntary.
The survey interviewed 1,515 Canadians and 1,016 Americans. It found that the province with the highest support for a mandatory vaccine were those in Atlantic Canada at 63 percent, with Ontario being at 62 percent in favour.
The province showing lowest support for a mandated coronavirus vaccine was Manitoba and Saskatchewan at 52 percent support.
The same question was asked to American respondents with results showing an even 50-50 split of those in favour and against a mandatory coronavirus vaccine.
The survey also asked another vaccine-related question, inquiring when one would feel “comfortable with the government lifting the restrictions on workplace and leisure activity” and letting people get back to work.
The results show that only 15 percent of Canadians feel people should not return to work until there is a vaccine. This compares with a total of 25 percent of Americans for the same question.
A total of 28 percent overall of Canadians say that returning to work should happen when there are only sporadic cases with no pressure on the healthcare system. This compares to 25 percent of Americans who were asked the same questions.
The same survey also found that the majority of Canadians (48 percent) would not agree with “governments using location data from people’s mobile devices to monitor social distancing/self-isolation.” This compares to 45 percent saying they would be OK with cell phone tracking.
For the same question about government tracking for American respondents, 43 percent would not agree to phone tracking with 44 percent saying they would be OK with it.
The issue of vaccinations, either forced or voluntary, considering the coronavirus, has seen prominent business leaders state their opinion on the subject.
Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, said in a CBS This Morning interview in early April that post coronavirus “life” will not be the same, or at least until everyone is “widely vaccinated.”
While many drug companies are working to provide a vaccine for coronavirus, some companies such as Moderna are known to use aborted fetal cell lines in their development.
In early April, Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas said he would reject any coronavirus vaccine that uses any type of tissue from “aborted children.”
Last week, Strickland sent out a letter that asked Catholics to come together with him to stop the development of any coronavirus vaccine which comes from aborted babies.
“The crime of abortion is considered legal in our nation does not mean it is morally permissible to use the dead bodies of these children to cure a global pandemic. Emphatically, this practice is evil,” Strickland said in the letter.
In late April, a group consisting of several Catholic bishops along with prominent pro-life leaders sent an open letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asking them to make sure that any coronavirus vaccines produced would be “free from any connection to abortion.”
In his 1995 encyclical titled Evangelium Vitae, Pope St. John Paul II stated that “killing of innocent human creatures, even if carried out to help others, constitutes an absolutely unacceptable act,” adding, “The child in the womb is more than a creature. The child in the womb is a human person. Just as we are human persons.”