Unethical Mandates have far-reaching Consequences
BC Public Service Employees for Freedom dawned as a small Telegram group the same week that our employer, the BC Public Service Agency, informed us about its mandatory Covid-19 vaccination policy. Within days we grew from forty members to over eight hundred members. Our colleagues began sharing how this vaccination policy was personally affecting their lives. We realized that each of us may have very different reasons for not wanting or being able to comply with this policy. However, our common goal of wanting to maintain our livelihoods and bodily autonomy remained a constant.
The following impact statements are from BC Public Service employees who consented to the sharing of their story. These are just some of our stories:
I have been a proud member of the BC Public Service for the last 18 years and I work with some amazing people. I am also a survivor of domestic abuse. These don’t completely define me but they have made me into the person I am today. I fought for 7 long years to break the shackles of control and abuse to save my children. Every step of the way I have experienced how broken our systems are – social, criminal, and civil at both the provincial and federal levels.
– Anonymous Scientific Technical Office for the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development
Three years ago, when we finally became free, I made a promise to my children that I would never allow anyone to have power, dominance and control over us where they felt they could threaten our very existence. And on October 5, 2021, I was blindsided with the fact that I was now working for my abuser. My mental health has been on a drastic decline. My PTSD from the years of abuse that I suffered has been triggered which I thought I had finally laid to rest for the last few years. I am unable to concentrate, eat or sleep. I am reliving moments from my past that are now paralleling my present. I have been pushed into a corner and silenced, unable to have a voice over fear of the consequences.
I am once again in a position where losing my home and providing for my children is a reality. And once again it’s because I have been given the “choice” to either fall victim to their demands and continue in a relationship with my abuser or to fight for my freedom to save my mental and physical health and show my children what it means to stand up for what you believe in. I choose to fight.
21 years with MCFD [Ministry of Children and Family Development] all along to have respected people, worked with clients and families of all walks of life. Rich and poor, new immigrants and even refugees, young and old, and I tried my best to inform them of their rights.
I informed them to get legal aid if they couldn’t afford a lawyer. Always, always informed youth of their right to refuse services that MCFD and I think would have be helpful, such as counseling! Never ever I have pushed any one to do or say something they were not comfortable doing and that they didn’t consent to!!! Even parents who were using drugs and putting infants and toddlers at risk had to consent for me to talk to their doctor in hopes of finding harm reduction strategies!
– Anonymous Social Worker from the Ministry of Children and Family Development
Now I have to reveal my private medical information to my employer without my consent or lose my job! Absolutely unacceptable! Ridiculously made to believe it’s what we swore to do when we agreed to serve the public.
I have worked for the BC Government going on 21 years. I started my career in field operations in the Ministry of Environment and moved on to land use planning.
Our family leads a healthy lifestyle, one filled with outdoor pursuits and caring for our natural environment. We have always made decisions related to our lives with careful consideration as to how those decisions may reflect our short and long-term goals and dreams – and we never make choices in haste or through external pressure. The recent vaccine mandate made by the BC Government to their employees will have an immediate and lasting detrimental impact on myself and my family. My wife also faces termination with her municipal employer with a similar mandate being forced upon employees at her job site. Two salaries instantly gone. Our daughter is in 6th grade and we have always encouraged her to stand up for freedom and personal health choices.
I’m truly emotionally and physically devastated to know that my employer is now bullying and coercing me into getting a medical intervention to keep my job…essentially holding my livelihood and my family hostage until I concede. My family has always believed in vaccination as an important tool in managing personal health. Myself, I am fully vaccinated for most common diseases, as is my wife and daughter (our daughter just received the Hep B vaccine thus completing her full suite of historically common vaccines). Making note that we chose to put vaccines in our body that have been through rigorous analysis and decades of testing. We are not anti-vaxxers, but we are vaccine choice.
I fear most for our daughter, who has seen a world transformed in recent years. She has seen me break down and cry, driven to deep depression and anger over the loss of my job – a job that I love and sacrificed so much for – and that of my wife’s employment as well – our entire life is to be uprooted and torn apart, just because we refuse to take a vaccine (it really isn’t a true vaccine- but rather a treatment) that is being forced upon us.
I will also share now that my daughter, wife and I contracted Covid-19 in October 2021…we indeed did survive – a cold/flu that lasted a week – my daughter was 100% within two days. Our new natural immunity has helped us better understand this strain of the Coronavirus. Staying healthy, both mentally and physically, is the key.
In closing, I say to those who are behind this misdirected and unethical plan to force a person to take something against their will to keep their job and career – look long and hard at what you are doing to families, let go of your power and let people make their own decisions when it comes to their personal health.
– Anonymous section head in the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy
An enjoyable seven years with a natural resource ministry that might be coming to an abrupt end. The BC Public Service is an employer that touts diversity and inclusion and a gender-based analysis, unless it is inconvenient and doesn’t fit an agenda. This mandate to inject people with an experimental vaccine for a virus where the majority of the population is not at risk in order to remain employed is nothing but coercive. I do not feel fully informed nor do I feel like I can make this decision without fear of reprisal. There is an insidious agenda at play, borrowing from the playbook of totalitarianism, and that does not belong in the 21st century west. I will not bow down. I will not give in. I will not allow these dangerous ideals to rob me of my sovereignty.
Now, to clarify, I am not “anti-vax”. That’s a convenient insult used by the failing corporate media and our own bent leadership. It’s untrue. I have had all of my vaccines and even flu shots some years. I think vaccines are great. My kids will get their routine shots. Even the mRNA vaccines make sense if you’re at risk. However, the risk/reward for young and healthy people does not make sense. And that should be a choice. There are many other ways we can mitigate risk. How about making sure you have adequate vitamin D, exercise, and controlled blood sugar and blood pressure? How about remote work for those unvaccinated? How about waiting until there are better long-term data on vaccines? None of these options are even discussed, let alone considered. It’s do as I say, or else. That is not going to fly.
I am a primary bread winner in my family and losing my job will not be easy. There is a lot of associated anxiety. I will miss my team, my work, and my contributions to protect this amazing province. I am very saddened by our leadership, and I suspect it is purely political, with most actual executive and managers in the organization in disagreement. But, the good part of Canadians is also a curse: polite and passive, and prefer to not stir the pot and speak out when things we know are wrong are happening. Here’s to hoping for change, for the better, for us all.
– Anonymous BC Public Service Employee