David McLaughlin was Manitoba’s Clerk of the Executive Council and Cabinet Secretary from 2020-2021.
Last week, Manitoba announced it will lift its COVID-19 restrictions in the coming weeks. As we say goodbye, we should note the success of these mandates in helping to restore a sense of “normalcy” in the midst of a pandemic.
In fighting COVID-19, governments have required the use of every available tool to protect the health of their citizens and the security of the health care system. Vaccine mandates were part of this tool kit. The mandates increased vaccine uptake, kept many people from winding up in hospital or dying, and allowed businesses and society to function more freely than at any previous point in the pandemic. Simply put, the mandates worked.
The loud voices shouting ”freedom over fear” are seeking to rewrite history to place themselves on a higher moral plane than those of us who had to make the tough calls and hard decisions on pandemic restrictions, decisions that kept people safe and kept society as open as possible in the direst of circumstances.
I was helping to make those calls where it most counted, in a provincial government where constitutional responsibility for health care resides. As Manitoba’s Clerk of the Executive Council and Cabinet Secretary, I started and ended each day figuring out what else we could do against this insidious, pernicious virus. It was relentless in pace and unforgiving in its demands. Our decisions were literally matters of life and death.
Manitoba introduced two kinds of vaccination mandates, each different in intent but with a common element of freedom: choice.
The first was a vaccine passport: a secure, made-in-Manitoba QR code – one of the first in Canada – that enabled every vaccinated Manitoban to visit friends, dine out, go to a movie, travel and attend sporting or cultural events without any capacity limitations. The decision to get vaccinated meant that many facets of normal, pre-pandemic life were restored for you.
Did it work? On Aug. 5, 2021, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers held a sellout season opener with more than 30,000 vaccinated fans in the stands. It was the largest single outdoor event for fully vaccinated people in all of Canada that summer. The provincial government worked with the team on vaccination protocols, provided free scanners and trained stadium staff on how to use them. Two weeks later, following the virus’s incubation period, no surge in COVID-19 cases occurred.
The second was a vaccine mandate for designated public-sector workers in health care, education and child care, necessary to keep those public services safe and open. We required proof of vaccination or – and this matters – a negative rapid-test result. Giving workers the choice of either showing proof of vaccination or taking a rapid test was essential in avoiding vaccine-hesitant staff shortages, an issue that initially drew ire toward Quebec’s policy, but not Manitoba’s.
It worked. Almost 95 per cent of health care workers got vaccinated. The remainder tested for their shifts while only a handful chose to resign. Public services were not abbreviated. Until Omicron hit, Manitoba avoided much of the high case counts and health system strain that other provinces experienced last fall. More importantly, vaccination rates continued to rise and lifted Manitoba to the highest vaccination rate in the Prairies. Vaccine passports proved to be the most effective tool we had to nudge people along.
Today’s overheated rhetoric about newly won liberty would make you think governments colluded in some kind of dystopian, COVID-driven Handmaid’s Tale to subjugate or program people into the theft of their personal freedoms. That’s nonsense and dangerous. It undermines public trust in public health when COVID-19 is still with us.
Manitoba did not gleefully implement vaccine requirements. I did not recommend these to the Premier and Cabinet without deep reflection and consideration. Restricting people’s freedoms in Canada should never be done on a whim, or without great reluctance. Doing everything possible to encourage vaccination and protect people while keeping schools, hospitals and businesses open and operating was the best choice for society. The government’s overriding obligation to the many, and not just the few, at a time of a great public emergency mattered most.
Vaccine mandates were always meant to be temporary. Ironically, it is the omnipresence of Omicron, with its ease of transmission, that is forcing us to consider how and when to lift those mandates while keeping the public safe. We have reached the moment when we must start to pivot from a pandemic to an endemic perspective, as we learn to live with COVID-19. But governments should do so carefully and deliberately with a realistic, science-based strategy and public input on what we most want to protect. A triumphalist cry of “freedom over fear” is a slogan, not a plan.
So, let us bury vaccine mandates, but not before praising them.
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