Employers enforcing vaccination

Question: Can my employer force me to get vaccinated?

Answer: Of course nobody is going to force you to get vaccinated. An employer might decide, however, that to protect the health and safety of other employees it is going to require employees to be vaccinated in order to show up to work and get paid. 

If an employee claims an exemption under the Ontario Human Rights Code the employer has to give due consideration to whether the employee can be accommodated in the workplace without a vaccine. Human Rights Code exemptions include a medical condition, religious belief or a belief based on one’s creed. 

A medical exemption is going to have to be supported by a note from a medical doctor. If an employee appears to have a valid Human Rights exception, the employer must consider whether they can be accommodated without endangering the health and safety of other employees and their families and contacts. Considerations would include whether or not an employee could work from home or work in a remote area of the employer’s facility with extremely limited contact with other employees. Another consideration would be whether the employee could be offered working hours when almost no one else is around. Daily we are seeing more and more announcements of mandatory vaccine policies. A month ago nobody wanted to be first but now the landscape has changed significantly.