The President of the Saskatchewan Teachers Federation says the government can make it a condition of employment to provide evidence that those employed in the school system are vaccinated, just as they would have to provide evidence of a teaching degree.

Patrick Maze says the STF calling on the provincial government to mandate vaccines for all staff and students in the province’s schools, not just teachers. He says students have a right to an education but that doesn’t mean they have a right to sit in school if you’re potentially making it an unsafe working or learning environment

“And so those students who refuse to provide evidence of being vaccinated or refusing to get vaccinated would have to look at other options like online learning or submitting to rapid tests regularly, and that sort of thing, in order to ensure that they are not spreading the virus.”

STF’s president says they expect push-back after stating today (tues) that all students, staff and teachers who are eligible, should have to be vaccinated.

“I think a lot of it centres around people saying they have rights. They ignore a lot of the time their responsibilities to society to keep things up and running and so we’ve seen businesses devastated because of loss of their revenue through shutdowns or slow-downs and we need to get our society up and running again and the way to do that is getting vaccinated.”

Maze says it’s not good enough to encourage vaccination, that it has to be an expectation if you want to participate in regular life in schools and he points to the federal government’s recent announcement around mandatory vaccination for all federal public service as well as most air and rail travel.