As the threat of a fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic looms and vaccines prove effective, the City of Greater Sudbury is working on a vaccine policy for city staff.
Sudbury.com requested an interview with Mayor Brian Bigger on the topic earlier this week. We instead received this written response on behalf of the municipality from the mayor’s chief of staff, Hugh Kruzel.
“The city is reviewing the risk directive from the province and consulting with local public health to determine a vaccination policy for city staff,” the statement reads. “This has been our consistent approach and process throughout the pandemic.”
A city representative noted there were 3,036 staff members with the City of Greater Sudbury in 2020, excluding Greater Sudbury Police Service but including volunteer firefighters.
The municipal vaccination policy currently being drafted follows suit with other organizations that have either established or are currently in the process of drafting vaccine policies.
The City of Toronto and its public transit agency announced the vaccination would be mandatory for all workers in the coming weeks.
All three post-secondary institutions in Greater Sudbury recently announced that they require those accessing their campuses this fall to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Meanwhile, Ontario teachers’ unions are calling for mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for eligible staff and students at the province’s schools.
Sudbury.com reached out to a few city councillors selected at random to learn what they want to see in the city’s vaccine policy, gaining insights from Ward 4 Coun. Geoff McCausland, Ward 2 Coun. Michael Vagnini, Ward 8 Coun. Al Sizer and Ward 11 Coun. Bill Leduc.
“It’s a challenging thing because there’s that balancing act between personal comfort and autonomy and the public good,” McCausland said. “We strike that kind of thing all the time. I personally believe that the only way out of this pandemic and the only way back to some kind of normal is to get everyone vaccinated.”
Whether it’s legally enforceable remains a question, but McCausland is of the opinion that the city should take a stand and declare that all its employees need to be vaccinated.
“I believe that’s the right thing to do from a leadership standpoint,” he said. “Do the right thing until somebody forces you not to.”
Leduc shares a similar pro-vaccine perspective, describing it as the clearest path back toward some sense of normalcy, but said he’s waiting to see what comes forward in the city’s policy.
“As far as our city workers, we can put a policy in place to get them vaccinated, we just can’t enforce it,” he said. “We will take the necessary steps to ensure the safety of all our employees.”
Aside from those who can’t get vaccinated due to underlying health issues, he said getting the vaccine is a simple process and that he was in and out within minutes for both of his vaccine appointments.
Vagnini declined to comment on what he’d like to see in a municipal vaccine policy, but did say he has been receiving a lot of information from people regarding vaccines, not all of it accurate.
Getting vaccinated, he added, “is a choice that people have to make, but the only thing I can say is we had a vaccine for polio that was very controversial back then, and today we don’t hear a lot about polio.”
Sizer said that while he hasn’t heard too much about a potential vaccine policy, he doesn’t have a problem with options like vaccine passports and registrations.
“It’s for the good of the community,” he said, adding that a good parallel to this is the fact that seatbelts have long since been mandated.
At the latest count Monday, Public Health Sudbury & Districts recorded a vaccine uptake of 82.7 per cent of residents 12 years of age and older as having received their first dose. In the health unit, approximately 75.4 per cent of eligible people are fully immunized. Provincially, these figures are a respective 82.2 per cent and 75 per cent.
On Wednesday, the province recorded 94 people in Ontario intensive care units, of whom 78 were unvaccinated, nine were partially vaccinated and seven were fully vaccinated.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
