'It's politics': Kevin Falcon says BC NDP dropped vaccine mandate because of election fears
BC United Leader Kevin Falcon has accused the BC NDP government of dropping the COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health workers over fears it could hurt the party’s election chances.
Falcon, who has long attacked the requirement, told NowMedia he thinks the reason the order was rescinded on Friday was “politics.”
“Over the last two years, I've had nothing but cynicism, snide remarks, attacks by the NDP, by [Health Minister] Dix, by all of their left-wing followers, about how irresponsible my position was.
“But you go look at the charts from two years ago, what the COVID rate of infections are, and you look at today, and they are virtually indistinguishable.”
The mandate, he said, “was not founded on science or evidence.” Instead, the province was “punishing [unvaccinated] workers … because of NDP ideology.”
“I think it's politics,” he added. “So they're doing it two and a half months before an election because they're worried about this issue arising in the election.”
Dr. Bonnie Henry, the provincial health officer who put the vaccine mandate in place in 2021 and who officially dropped it on Friday, said at a press conference last week that politics had nothing to do with the decision.
She insisted the move was based on data, but added the order "probably maybe could have been [rescinded] a few months ago" were it not for "uncertainty about whether we were going to see a spring wave."
"Wastewater indicators and testing data show COVID-19 has levelled off and the number of people in intensive care and in hospitals is lower and stable,” she said on Friday. “The level of protection provided by vaccines and hybrid immunity is also helping to protect us."
When asked by NowMedia at Friday’s press conference why BC ended up being such an outlier with its mandate – it was the only province in Canada to maintain one so long – he vehemently defended his government’s handling of the pandemic.
“An outlier, yes, in terms of putting in a vaccine mandate requirement, but other jurisdictions, other hospitals, other jurisdictions in Canada did that – there were essentially two that did it, ourselves and Nova Scotia,” he said.
“We did that because we were determined to keep people safe. An outlier, maybe, because of our determination to support public health, put the health of British Columbians first.”
NowMedia also asked Dix if he had any plans to entice the fired health workers back into the BC system, but he did not directly answer the question.
Instead, he said: "We need everyone. We encourage everyone who can work in the health care system to work in the health care system."
#BC Health Minister Adrian Dix, discussing the dropping of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, said he has tried "not to divide people."
Falcon, however, did say he agreed with the vaccine mandate when the province was “in the midst of the crisis.”
It “made some sense,” he explained, for BC to not have “those folks … working in a hospital setting.”
“I don't think there'd be too much argument around that,” he added. “The issue was that they wouldn't bring them back, even when there was no evidence to support keeping them out.”
The leader of the opposition also accused Dix of speaking “total nonsense” after the health minister told NowMedia he had sought “not to divide people” by vaccination status during the pandemic.
Falcon said that, on the contrary, Dix had “really singled them out.”
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