As New Brunswick’s final COVID-19 reopening stage nears, businesses want to know if vaccination status can be a condition of service or even employment.
But the government doesn’t have a clear answer yet.
“We’re still working with public health, public safety and government on this and I don’t know if there’s been a decision,” said Health Minister Dorothy Shephard during a COVID-19 briefing on Wednesday.
“I think that private businesses have a fair bit of latitude but I don’t know that they’ll be any directives from government that will address this.”
As of Thursday, the province is under 150,000 second doses for meeting the benchmark to move to the green phase of recovery, when all public health restrictions will be lifted. The target for the move is to have 75 per cent of those eligible with two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine and could be reached by the end of the month.
That leaves little time for businesses to prepare for what comes after.
“The one thing that business owners cherish is certainty,” said John Wishart, CEO of the Greater Moncton Chamber of Commerce.
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Wishart says that there is still an uncomfortable amount of uncertainty as the province nears the end of public health restrictions.
“It seems that the closer that we get to green, the more we get to a sense of grey around this question. What are the obligations, the responsibilities, the rights of business owners to deny service to someone who is not vaccinated or to send an employee home who isn’t vaccinated?” Wishart asked.
“We do not want to be out in no man’s land making judgment calls around who we can serve or who we have the right to deny service to based on vaccination status.”
This comes as the province has decided it will not implement a domestic vaccine passport system, leaving it up to the federal government to deal with the process for international travel. In Quebec, officials have said that it could make use of vaccine passports if hit by a fourth wave of COVID-19 this fall, which would limit unvaccinated people’s access to higher risk activities such as going to bars, gyms, concerts or other large venues.
Quebec says it will not allow employers to use vaccine passports as a hiring requirement.
In New Brunswick, the issue of access for those who choose to remain unvaccinated has been on the government’s mind for some time. On June 11, premier Blaine Higgs told reporters that the province had gotten a legal opinion saying businesses would be allowed to withhold service based on a patron’s vaccination status.
“A business owner has the right to run their business as they see fit, and certainly in the context of keeping people safe. So what they’re doing in that context is keeping people, other patrons safe,” Higgs said.
“I’m not going to get in the middle of that.”
He also said that employers would be able to make having the vaccine a requirement of employment.
The department of justice and public safety did not respond to emails asking if that would be the final advice given to businesses.
But according to Fredericton Chamber of Commerce CEO Krista Ross, that guidance is expected soon.
“We are expecting guidance documents from WorkSafe New Brunswick,” Ross said.
“They’re telling us that they will be providing us with guidance documents that we’ll be able to share with our members and businesses and not-for-profits prior to getting to the green phase of recovery.”
Wishart says he wants to see that guidance as soon as possible, to allow businesses to prepare for life in green.
“We can’t put any roadblocks in making sure that those dollars reach the tills of business owners because there’s any lack of clarity over who can and can’t be served,” he said.
“We really are pushing on both levels of government to sit down and hammer some sort of standard set of rules that businesses can live by.”
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