Health Canada says vaccines CANNOT be made mandatory
In May 1997, the Canada Communicable Disease Report (CCDR) released volume 23S4, publishing the 1996 issue of Canadian National Report on Immunization with such fun slogans as “Take the shot” and “Be wise-immunize”:
The CCDR has been solely funded by the Government of Canada since its inception in 1975, first under Health Canada, then under Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) since 2004. It claims to be a peer-reviewed journal:
The Canada Communicable Disease Report (CCDR) is a bilingual, peer-reviewed journal on infectious diseases. It is published on the Government of Canada website by the Public Health Agency of Canada on the first Thursday of each month, with combined issues in March/April and July/August.
Its aim, they say, is to provide “authoritative” information to healthcare professionals.
The May 1997 issue used to be available on the official PHAC website here.
That link has since been scrubbed, but an archived version of the site can still be viewed here, here, or here.
The CCDR website only makes issues back to 2004 available, but it is possible to dig up older issues on the Government of Canada Publications website. There, a PDF of the issue can still be downloaded. In case that disappears too, an archived version of the PDF can be found here.
You’ll find what’s referenced below at the bottom of page 9 of the document.
Cannot be made mandatory
Hard to believe? Yes, they really did say that!
Here is the direct quote (emphasis mine):
Unlike some countries, immunization is not mandatory in Canada; it cannot be made mandatory because of the Canadian Constitution.
This is the government apparently stating it cannot make vaccination mandatory.
Unfortunately it didn’t take until the second sentence to start going downhill:
Only three provinces have legislation or regulations under their health-protection acts to require proof of immunization for school entrance. Ontario and New Brunswick require proof for diphtheria, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella immunization. In Manitoba, only measles vaccination is covered.
They explain how that’s not actually mandatory “because exceptions”:
exceptions are permitted for medical or religious grounds and reasons of conscience; legislation and regulations must not be interpreted to imply compulsory immunization.
It gets worse:
parents who do not wish to have their children immunized must actively refuse and sign documents attesting to that fact. Also, all provinces and territories have regulations that allow for the exclusion of unvaccinated children from school during outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases.
On top of how heinous it is to not simply respect personal and bodily autonomy when making a choice to abstain from a medical procedure, this is a barnum statement soup. If you’re unfamiliar with barnum statements, it’s a widely used tactic to say something that sounds like it means something very specific, but can actually mean just about anything to anyone. I highly recommend listening to Legalman talk about that on The Quash.
“Unvaccinated” could mean having had zero vaccines, one vaccine, all of the many required vaccines but one, or all vaccines but simply late on a booster dose - and we’ve seen in recent years how loosely terms like “outbreak” are used. This is deliberately worded to sound reasonable while giving broad discretion to interpret as they see fit.
No one has the authority to impose an unwanted medical procedure on you, period.
No law, regulation, legislation, mandate, rule, bylaw, edict, ordinance, order or loop hole therein can change that.
Still, it’s surely a sign of the times that a statement like “cannot be made mandatory” would even be published at all, especially in Canada.