BC's VACCINE MANDATE CREATES A NIGHTMARE

Across town, another Abbotsford long-term care facility with multiple residences and a hospital, Menno Place, was already struggling with staffing issues before the province’s vaccination mandates were implemented. Once Oct. 27 arrived, an already challenging dilemma quickly turned more desperate.

Having lost nine regular and 19 casual employees because of the vaccine mandate, she found that looking for workers to fill shifts from a depleted pool is even harder. And despite the province pledging to train thousands more nurses and other specialists, Biggs noted that most are still years away from graduating, and given the shortages that existed before this week’s new crisis, those workers would be “just a spit in the bucket.”

Care homes and hospitals aren’t the only sectors that have been working to avoid severe staff shortages, even before the vaccination deadline. Paramedics, 911 dispatchers, and other first responders were also short-staffed, which worsened once some workers chose to forego the COVID-19 vaccine.