BC vaccine passport policy challenge

The CCF is proceeding with a legal challenge against the BC vaccine passport regime and its discriminatory impact on people who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. The BC vaccine passport policy restricts entry to certain public spaces only to people who can prove they have received two doses of a COVID vaccine. The government has repeatedly stated that there are no medical exemptions, and that people who cannot be vaccinated for a medical reason should stay home.

The CCF is working with several individuals on a challenge to the policy for failing to create medical exemptions:

• A teenage girl who developed heart inflammation after her first dose of a COVID vaccine. She is ineligible for a second dose.
• A woman who developed nerve damage following her first dose of a COVID vaccine, leaving her arm partially paralyzed. She is now pregnant, and her neurologist has advised her not to get a second dose, due to the risk of further nerve damage, including damage that could impact her unborn baby.
• A woman who has complex and overlapping disabilities, has undergone approximately 15 surgeries, and who is contraindicated for numerous medications. Due to her complex medical situation and the lack of information about how the COVID vaccine may interact in the body of a person with her unique set of disabilities, and her past drug reactions, she is at heightened risk of a serious reaction to the vaccine.
The CCF is represented in this case by BC lawyer Geoffrey Trotter.




Update: The British Columbia Court of Appeal has released the decision in a Charter challenge to the province’s COVID-19 vaccine passport scheme for failing to create a workable system for medical exemptions. The CCF and the three patients who brought this appeal were unsuccessful, but there were some important positive findings in the case. Read the full press release here on the decision.

BC vaccine passport policy challenge