In a unanimous vote, Powassan council has rescinded its COVID-19 Mandatory Vaccination Policy.
Council made the decision at its Tuesday evening meeting.
It means municipal employees who were not vaccinated are allowed to return to work.
Chief Administration Officer Maureen Lang says the employees were back at work Wednesday.
Before being rescinded, the policy directed all municipal employees to be vaccinated and those who did not comply by a certain date would be placed on an unpaid leave of absence.
The unpaid leave period began in early December.
Coun. Markus Wand led the debate on scrapping the vaccine policy.
“Given that the province has lifted the vaccine requirements, I don't think we should expect our staff to be vaccinated,” Wand said.
“I'm all in support of vaccinations to protect yourself. But with the requirement lifted, I don't think we should have that requirement either.”
As an alternative, Wand suggested following provincial guidelines on how to handle COVID in the future and Coun. Debbie Piekarski also suggested that guidelines from the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit be added to any future document.
Mayor Peter McIsaac weighed in on the debate and told council when the policy was first put in place, he believed it was the right thing to do.
“But if omicron has taught us one thing it's that vaccinated healthy people or zero symptom people who are carrying COVID were just as likely to spread it in the community as unvaccinated people,” McIsaac said.
“When we started to see that, it kind of opened my eyes that vaccinated or unvaccinated, you could still spread COVID.”
McIsaac said it appears the pandemic is tapering off, and also agreed the replacement COVID document should be one that follows provincial and health unit guidelines, otherwise, the municipality would be changing the Mandatory Vaccination Policy each time something changed at the provincial government level.
McIssac added when Premier Doug Ford announced the mask mandate would soon end, it also caught his attention and was another example of how COVID requirements were rapidly changing.
However, McIssac pointed out if the mask mandate was to end right now he would still likely wear a mask to this weekend's Voodoos hockey game.
“I don't feel comfortable, I don't want to catch COVID and I know it's in the community,” he said.
“But that's a personal choice.”
The mayor added it would also be a personal choice for people not to wear a mask if they had the blessing of the Ontario government that masks no longer need to be worn.
The mandatory policy has been replaced with one where the municipality follows provincial and public health unit guidelines when managing its operations.
Not related to the vaccination policy, directions on how to deal with COVID-19 in the workplace, should it experience a resurgence, will remain in place as part of the municipality's Human Resources policies.
Rocco Frangione is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the North Bay Nugget. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
