A mere eight days after John Rustad, likely the next premier of B.C., made an election promise to rescind B.C.’s vaccine mandate public health order (PHO) — signed by the public’s hero-turned-villain Dr. Bonnie Henry — Dr. Henry herself rescinded it.
It was naked political calculus by the provincial health officer.
Her initial order was not about public protection — not for more than two years. It was illiberal, intrusive and unnecessary. It was about control and conformity — and punishing health-care workers who challenged the ethics of being coerced into taking a vaccine. The order’s pretext of “public protection” crumbled in the spring of 2022, if not months earlier, when it became obvious that COVID vaccines did not stop the spread of the virus to anywhere near the degree promised. It was nonsense that the order still existed until July 26, 2024, and everyone in B.C. is paying the price in the form of severe nursing shortages.
Henry, whose policies are closely aligned with the governing NDP, claimed that her announcement is based off of the latest epidemiological data, rather than a thinly-veiled attempt to thwart the rising popularity of the B.C. Conservatives, ahead of the Oct. 9 election. We can see through it.
Her public health order, extended in October 2023, led to hundreds, if not thousands, of health-care workers fired for refusing the COVID vaccine. Rustad claims the number is in the “thousands,” while a recent court ruling — that upheld Dr. Henry’s now rescinded public health order — estimated the number to be around 1,800. It’s unclear that we will ever get an exact figure.
B.C.’s health-care system is in dire condition. It is plagued with daily nursing shortages on hospital units and there are thousands of empty nursing positions around the province. Like elsewhere in Canada, many of us have given up on finding a family doctor. Several B.C. universities are no longer able to fill their nursing program seats. We have seen emergency rooms — particularly in rural B.C. — closed for lack of staff. If you’ve been to an emergency room in the province lately, you’re liable to recover from a self-limiting condition before a doctor ever lays eyes on you.
So, what is going to happen now that B.C.’s fired health care workers can, theoretically, return to work? Do they even want to come back? Are they still in the province?
Andrea Dyer was a registered psychiatric nurse for six years in various hospital settings. Before nursing, she spent years as a care aide, also in hospitals. After getting fired in 2022 for declining the COVID vaccine, she managed to find casual work caring for a quadriplegic woman in her community. She won’t go back to nursing without back pay and a reinstatement of her seniority.
“Being fired made me feel completely devalued. I cared for COVID patients in the pandemic — then felt completely discarded and ostracized. I have had all (other) immunizations. I just believe in the right to choose without coercion,” said Dyer. She misses her job immensely.
“I loved helping patients who were at their lowest mentally and emotionally. I loved working with families to learn how to best care for patients. I loved working with a team of people with similar goals as me. I’m appalled when I hear about emergency room closures, when I’m willing and able to work at a moment’s notice,” she said.
Dyer was not eligible for employment insurance because she was fired “for cause” — the cause, of course, being she was unvaccinated for COVID. She said this was a huge financial hit to her family of four. But she says she could not back down on her principles.
“I continue to take this stand to protect each individual’s right to informed consent without coercion for medical interventions. I’m proud of myself. My daughters are proud of me too,” she said.
Another nurse, Corinne Mori, has become well known in health-care circles for her involvement with the volunteer organization BC Nurses Fight Mandates. She said she’s not pleased with Dr. Henry, even after lifting the public health order.
“This decision by Bonnie Henry is deliberately not addressing the fact that she abused and mistreated health-care workers — and that there is no discussion around compensation or the proper process to reinstate us with the legal entitlements we should be compensated with. We are not happy. We are organizing and we are going to battle her. It’s just a play — because the B.C. NDP are not going to win the election. … They have not addressed the real issue, which is the abuse of health care workers. They need to do some compensation and reconciliation,” said Mori.
Back in May, the B.C. Nurses’ Union announced that an arbitrator had ruled in a consent award that members fired over the vaccine mandate would be re-hired, should the health order be rescinded by Jan. 31, 2025. The grievance and arbitration processes for fired nurses are ongoing to this day.
If Rustad wins this fall, which looks likely, he will probably still need to reckon with the fall-out of Dr. Henry’s decision.
Prior to the PHO being rescinded, Mori said she was unsure what, if any, impact these ongoing negotiations could have on what Rustad could feasibly do for the fired nurses. She worried that, should a Conservative government demand employers give nurses more than their own unions were able to negotiate for them, they would end up with the lesser of the two ideals. “He could potentially end up with restrictions on what he’s allowed to provide,” she said. “I think that John Rustad is naïve in terms of what is going on behind the scenes.”
Additionally, Mori claimed that B.C. will never get back all of our fired nurses, no matter the effort. “I would say that a lot of nurses find the environment very threatening and intimidating so the — especially because they (the unions) have delayed this process so long. The trauma that nurses felt over this would make it very difficult for them to return to the workplace. And, like I said, many who wanted to continue working have had to leave the province to do so,” she said.
A representative from the BC Nurses’ Union did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Dr. Henry’s order was the last of its kind in this country. It had to go. It’s unfortunate that she was, apparently, only willing to end it in a brazen political move, rather than for the health of both our citizens and our care system.
They say that nurses are the backbone of any health-care care system and — if that’s true — we are in trouble, despite Dr. Henry’s about face. The province needs a hell of a lot more nurses than the ones who might go back to work.
National Post