VACCINE DOCUMENTATION

U of A may ask for proof after all

Less than 24 hours after saying students, faculty and staff would not be required to provide documentation when self-declaring their COVID-19 vaccination status, the University of Alberta now says they could be asked to.

On Tuesday, the U of A, University of Calgary and University of Lethbridge, announced those returning to campuses this fall will have to self-declare their vaccination status through an online tool. People who are not fully vaccinated or do not wish to disclose their status will have to undergo regular rapid testing beginning Sept. 1.

On the day the plan was announced, a frequently asked questions section on the U of A's website said people “will not be asked to show or submit vaccine documentation as part of the online process.” By Wednesday afternoon, that sentence had been removed from the website.

University spokesperson Michael Brown said the site was changed “to clarify while we await the full picture of the process for self-declaring vaccination status.”

“U of A is currently finalizing a process for our community to self-declare their vaccination status. As part of a verification step, U of A community members can be asked to provide documentation confirming their vaccination declaration,” Brown said in a statement.

“Similar to other university information gathering processes, failure to provide the required information or providing a false or misleading declaration may result in discipline under the code of student behaviour or relevant collective agreement or other applicable process.”

No additional information is available at this time, he said.

Officials are expected to release more details on the process before Aug. 25.

Universities across Canada are grappling with the question of whether they will require vaccination for students, faculty and staff returning to campus and what authority they have to ask for proof.

Postmedia reached out to 10 universities from across the country that have said they will have some form of a vaccine mandate.

In many cases the details of exactly what the rules are going to look like are still being worked on. Some, such as the University of Regina, said they will require students to prove they have been vaccinated.

“We also wanted to ensure that our vaccination mandate would be as effective as possible in limiting the spread of COVID -19, and in particular, the highly transmittable Delta variant,” University of Regina spokesman Paul Dederick said in an email.

Others, including Toronto's Ryerson University, have said that they will need everyone to attest to their vaccination status or agree to be tested in order to come to campus.

Calgary labour and employment lawyer Laura Mensch said the question of whether employers or institutions can ask for proof of COVID-19 vaccination has not been answered definitively by the courts yet.

“There are the health and safety interests that we're concerned about, there's even potentially civil liability, I suppose. But then there are the competing privacy interests,” she told Postmedia Wednesday.

“This is going to be ultimately health information and it's going to be private, personal information. So how are those rights going to intersect?”

Mensch advises clients who want to ask for proof to not ask for more than they need. She said it may also be possible to be shown proof but not keep that information on file, therefore limiting the risk that it could be compromised.

It may be difficult for large institutions to require physical proof from thousands of students, she said.

“If the employer or the institution has a duty to act reasonably in all of this, which is probably going to be one of the analyses, is it going to be reasonable then to ask for an attestation, especially if it perhaps comes with consequences that would arise if the attestation proves to be untrue?”

At the University of Calgary, Lorian Hardcastle, an associate professor who specializes in public health law and policy, was among those calling for all U of C students, staff, faculty, and visitors to have to provide proof of vaccination or evidence of a medical exemption.

On Wednesday, she said she was glad the plan was announced but that there are still some concerns including that people could lie on self-declaration forms.

“I think a lot of people are honest, but some segments won't be and I think it would have been preferable if they required some form of proof.”

She said there are also still questions around how long the rules will be in place, how often people will be tested and whether the three Alberta universities are going to be able to procure the tests they need.

Hardcastle wishes the government had provided vaccinated Albertans with documentation similar to that in Manitoba, where cards were issued with only basic demographic information and their vaccination status.

It's unclear when the question of a university's authority to ask for proof of vaccination will be settled.

Mensch said direction could come through a court case or even a union grievance or human rights complaint if one is filed.

I think a lot of people are honest, but some segments won't be ...