Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday announced that all the unvaccinated federal employees will be placed on unpaid leave. The country has also made COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for air, train and ship passengers under its new, probably one of the world’s strictest, vaccine mandate policies, Reuters reported. 

As per the new policy, all government employees are required to declare their full vaccination status with proof by October 29. Apart from that workers and passengers aged 12 and older travelling on government-regulated trains, planes and marine transport, must show they have been inoculated by October 30.

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“These travel measures, along with mandatory vaccination for federal employees, are some of the strongest in the world. If you’ve done the right thing and gotten vaccinated, you deserve the freedom to be safe from COVID,” Trudeau told the reporters on Wednesday.

According to the Treasury Board, there are almost 300,000 federal service workers in addition to the 955,000 federally regulated workers, representing about 8% of Canada‘s full-time workforce that manages the public service.

The mandate for federal employees is likely to be challenged in court, said Daniel Lublin, a Toronto-based employment lawyer.

“There will be claims,” Lublin said, noting that unpaid leave could be challenged as effective termination or unjust dismissal.

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The government’s new vaccine mandates were one of the promises made by Trudeau during his re-election last month and comes as one of the first fresh mandates after the return of power for the Liberals.

On the vaccination front, 80% of Canada’s eligible population, which is people aged 12 and above, is fully vaccinated against COVID-19. 

Apart from Canada, the United States has also announced that most federal workers must be vaccinated by November 22 while federal contractors are to be vaccinated by December 8. The Biden administration is also drafting rules to require large employers to have their workers inoculated or tested weekly.

Another country to adopt mandatory COVID-19 vaccine for government employees are Fiji, which asked public workers to go on leave if unvaccinated in August.