By Staff
January 7th, 2022
BURLINGTON, ON
A revision to the City of Burlington’s COVID-19 Staff Vaccination Policy will now require all City employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
The new mandatory vaccination policy reflects the need to ensure City workplaces are protected from the impacts of COVID-19 and supports the City’s top priority of keeping City employees and residents safe and reducing the spread of coronavirus.
The mandatory policy, which is effective immediately, applies to all staff and any new individuals being hired by the City. Employees will be required to submit their proof of vaccination by April 1, 2022.
A previous COVID-19 vaccination mandate put in place for the Fire Department will require all Fire staff to submit proof of vaccination against COVID-19 by March 1, 2022. The City will comply with its human rights obligations and accommodate employees who are legally entitled to accommodation.
The City of Burlington first introduced a COVID-19 Staff Vaccination Policy in August 2021. The policy required all City employees to show proof of vaccination by Oct. 1, 2021 and included a Rapid Antigen Testing option for those City staff not yet vaccinated prior to entering a City workplace.
Under the revised mandated policy, the definition of “fully vaccinated” is an individual who has received the full series of a COVID-19 vaccine or combination of COVID-19 vaccines approved by the Public Health Agency of Canada. It does not include booster shots at this time.
Staff who do not comply with the updated policy may be subject to progressive disciplinary measures including termination.
City Manager Tim Commisso
Tim Commisso, City Manager made it clear: “The situation with COVID-Omicron variant is dynamic and continues to evolve quickly. Over the last 21 months with the support of Council, the City’s leadership team has continually implemented and revised City policies and practices to help reduce the impact of the pandemic. The need to revise our Staff Vaccination Policy to now make it mandatory is totally aligned with our number one goal of protecting the health and safety of Burlington residents and staff.”
Quick Facts
• To date, 94% of City employees have provided proof that they are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
• To support the health and safety of the community and City staff, the City of Burlington also has a COVID-19 Contractor Vaccination Policy.
The policy requires contractors to be vaccinated or have a negative COVID-19 test within 72 hours prior to entering any City facility. The policy applies to all contractors who perform work for the City of Burlington indoors, for a period of longer than 15 minutes.
COVID-19 Links and Resources
COVID-19 vaccine information
• Community questions and requests regarding City of Burlington services can be directed to Service Burlington by phone at 905-335-7777, by email at city@burlington.ca or online
Seriously, “non existent rights”, “crazy talk”, “stop questioning what we have to do” , “death all around us”.
Maybe the conspiracy theorists are right with their talk about our Chairman’s plans for vaccine camps.
Blame the governments if you need to blame someone for the potential structural failures of our health systems and not fellow citizens making what they believe are the right choices for them.
Edward,
I have just seen your name here only very recently, after 2 years of this pandemic. I didn’t attack you directly, but you eventually turned to crazy problem solution denial talk was what prompted my comment.
The first sign was you saying that PM Trudeau has a “psychological problem” in almost the first paragraph. No reasoning, just the words. Then your rant about yourself (including a second comment) and fear-mongering about vaccines, despite saying you were triple vaccinated.
Don’t you see the sickness and death and economic disruption all over the world every day on the news? Number 1 in this is our neighbor south. You may be alright with this, but that’s crazy too. There, in the US, the children are now filling the hospitals. Some will die. Apparently, vaccine refusal is more important to you. What about when the schools open again?
Whether you like it or not, your denials will not stop the virus demanding vaccinations pretty much for a long time going forward if we are to save ourselves from folks like you.
Please save your breath.
Tom,
Its no longer a question of if you are infected but when and which variant. I applaud the return to school as most of these children vaccinated or not will develop natural immunity.
Based on my reading about 75% of all deaths are among citizens with multiple comorbidities.
So no I have no interest in continuing down this road of fear with vaccines that clearly are not able to protect citizens or our economic well being.
The inconvenient fact is that on almost every metric, beds, doctors, ICU units Canada on a per capita basis is at the bottom of the list. This with a shortage of health care staff and the aggressive Omicron variant. The die is cast I am afraid this time around.
All of the politicians have failed and are flailing for their political lives.
Fear them, all of them. I confess I do have a particular disrespect for Trudeau. He has done is doing nothing to change that view with his consistent divisive approach
Ted
I’m getting worried that too many people continue to ignore reality.
After 2 years of sickness and death all around us, and mostly unavoidable huge economic costs, some still make idiotic statements defending non existent rights to not getting vaccinated against Covid. This is crazy talk.
I am not aware of any rules or regulation that lets Councilors avoid vaccination. What consideration would allow this? It makes no moral sense at all. If we are ever to get back to face meetings how would this ever work?
And three months for the City mandate is completely out of step with the pace of the Covid cases and crushing burden. Bring in a vaxx-van and just do the place right now, no exceptions.
The public health system is past its limit to continue to bear the exponentially increasing burden being imposed on it. If this keeps up it will fail totally, and this failure will persist for quite a while..
Now, it’s not just rooms and capacity, but the health workers and nurses and medical professionals are getting sick with Covid and just tired and worn out. So we cannot use all of the hardware capacity that we have because the operators are out of commission. This failure has no short term fix and will get worse as far as we know.
This impending failure of pretty much everything, the economy included, is what we were all warned long ago was its fate that the public health protocols were designed to prevent. But too many people do not want to behave and do the things that have to be done to get out of this bad place and direction.
I don’t really know what further I can say that I haven’t said, or others here and what we can see all over.
We are in trouble, so stop crazy talk questioning what we have to do.
Tom Muir – Utter nonsense of a comment.
Maggie,
You are saying that the truth of reality is utter nonsense – what I said is mostly facts, commenting that the actions of too many people is based on nonsense, some of which I read here.
Please tell me what is nonsense?
Can anyone answer this question? Are members of Council considered to be employees? Are they mandated to be vaccinated?
Does this policy apply to council members?
Fred, totally agree with you – 3 months delay seems ridiculous , unless some employees have not received even the first vaccination and this allows for the time in between injections to get both shots, but not the booster.
One would think that the hospital could arrange for an” in-house” vaccination clinic for its employees to accomplish this quickly.
Personally, I support mandatory vaccinations in public and front line jobs. Regardless, this would seem to be a largely token gesture. April 1st is 3 months away. Why such a long delay?
For the past 2 years everyone has been dealing with a health situation that has affected life as we knew it. We are still sailing in uncharted waters.
Will these new MRNA vaccines “have the ability to permanently alter the bodies natural immune system”? This is a very good question, however, the answer to this will be a long time coming.
The vaccines seem to prevent most people from ending up in the hospital, but are not able to prevent us from contracting the different variants. Logically, as the virus mutates the vaccine based on the original Covid 19 strain does not seem effective in preventing illness.
From the start of the vaccine rollout the government’s mandate, in my opinion, was to try not to overwhelm our hospital system which was fragile prior to this pandemic. Many promises were made by all levels of government that seem not to have gone anywhere.
Many long term care employees work in more than one facility, this creates much more exposure as they move from one facility to another. These facilities don’t seem to have sufficient PPE or Rapid Antigen Test Kits and as a result it is the people in Long Term Care that suffer. In my opinion promises made were not promises kept.
Patients having to go to the hospital have the right to be protected and at this time the only option available is vaccination. All employees should be mandated to be vaccinated, and this includes the person doing the housekeeping to the techs, physicians and nurses who are in close contact with sick people.
Up until now the unvaccinated have been given options – multiple rapid antigen testing etc., and businesses have accommodated them. Omicron is a game changer and businesses have the right to tell the unvaccinated that they cannot work for them.
This variant is not only affecting hospitals. I noticed that where I go grocery shopping has unfilled shelves and those that have prepared food selections have very limited availability( many seniors depend on prepared food). I was told that they are very short-staffed now as people are getting sick or self-isolating.
When soldiers were fighting overseas in the world wars, they didn’t have an option to go home until the war was over or they were so injured that they could no longer stay in combat. Parents in countries affected by the war sent their children away in the hope of saving them, not knowing if they would ever see them again.
Make no mistake Covid 19 and its variants is a different type of war that we are fighting.
Mandating vaccination, especially in health care facilities should have happened a long time ago, and it is not too much of an ask.
Can someone address the question if these vaccines are so effective and safe for all groups at the present and for the long term and which in opinion is not a given or proven why is the virus spreading so rapidly amongst the vaccinated?
If so what is the purpose or meaning of a vaccine passport. This has gone past the point of believability. The last I read this virus has a survival rate (unvaccinated) of 99.7%.
We are one of the most vaccinated countries in the world yet look at our current situation and compare it to say Japan with an even older population. The Japanese civilization I know respect their elders and their leaders make better choices.
No we have a a bunch of politicians petrified of losing power who are enlisting their media shills and paid non practicing doctors to panic and scare the public looking for a blame villain and the unvaccinated are their obvious choice.
Canada has not made the necessary investments in health care across the country for decades and unfortunately this current sad situation is the result. Have you seen the comparisons with other G7 countries, number of beds, doctors per capita etc.
The myth that many Canadians have about the success of our “free” health care is sad yet every year we plan to bring hundreds of thousands of new comers in and add them to the to the aging population with meagre investments.
The current situation is the result and folks that chose to be unvaccinated who I generally support other than for front line health care are the scape goats. I will not support the further division of the citizens of country along these lines.
It is ridiculous to compare this to a war. Open up the schools and build natural heard immunity among the young who are virtually at zero risk to supplement the unproven vaccines. BTW it is already happening open or not.
Ted
“Omicron is a game changer”
And I fear we will have more in our future. I have often worried about the next variant. Or if somebody was infected with two variants at the same time. In the same cell (possible, yes?). Will there be a chance of swapping around of genetic (RNA) material? And now it is looking like that might be the case. Sorry, I’m musing, long day. “Stay safe everybody.”
Firstly I am a senior citizen, a resident of Burlington who is double vaccinated and boosted.
I am though passionately against this policy. I will personally take up the cause of impacted city workers. I have a neighbor, a critical care nurse, a single mom a professor ho is losing both of her jobs due to her unwillingness to be vaccinated. You don’t want to hear her analysis and unlike the Prime Minister I do not consider her racist or misogynist. This man has serious psychological problems.
On the medical front I was fortunate enough in October to undergo a successful heart procedure. I started cardiac rehab however that is now on hold due to the pandemic. I have eye surgery scheduled in March for both eyes and I expect this will be delayed. So I am personally impacted.
I will tell you at this time I have no plans to take another booster. Unless I am corrected all vaccines still remain approved for emergency use. J&J and Astra Zeneca are not to my knowledge being utilized to any degree in Canada and in fact NACI will not allow Moderna to be used for healthy males under 30.
I understand the restriction is due issues related to the heart and circulatory system. There is also chatter about the MRNA vaccines and their ability to permanently alter the bodies natural immune system. maybe someone brighter than I can educated me on this forum. Is this possible? Oh and I understand that the reason other age (older) groups are not restricted is that they were not in the study group. Comforting?
There is also clearly a “quiet” federal supply issue with Pfizer which is why folks over 30 cannot opt for Pfizer. There is also a federal supply issue with Rapid and PCR tests. I suspect that the US (Biden) is quietly limiting export and not as Trump did announcing the use of the Federal Defense Act.
This virus appears to mutate faster than experimental vaccines can be modified or developed. There is no science or compelling reason that I see to continue with this madness at this time with the same vaccine formula time and time again. In fact I consider “unproven” fourth doses to LTC in Toronto and locking these folks in rooms to be nothing short of medical quackery and elder abuse.
I do though remain hopeful that this Omicron Tsunami will rapidly crest as has elsewhere which is why the kids should be back in school building natural immunity and supplementing the vaccinated.
Ted