Canadian colleges force out unvaccinated students despite their low COVID risk

Across Canada, university and college students are being threatened with expulsion unless they take the mRNA Covid vaccine. While Covid itself poses very little risk to the vast majority of students, these young adults are pressured into getting injected with a new Covid vaccine that has not been subjected to long-term safety testing. Students who refuse this new vaccine will be expelled, after which they will be saddled with repaying student loans, all while being deprived of the careers they need in order to earn money to repay those loans.

Mariana Costa is two semesters away from finishing her Fashion Arts program at Seneca College. Crystal Love is a single mother studying to become a Veterinary Technician. Seneca College is forcing both Mariana and Crystal to get Covid shots or else throw away their years of education, their careers, and their future livelihoods. Seneca College is not providing Crystal and Mariana with the option of completing their programs online.

A simple fact appears to be lost on Seneca College and other Canadian institutions: Covid vaccination does not stop individuals from contracting or transmitting the virus. The vaccine manufacturers market their product as being useful to reduce the severity of Covid symptoms, while publicly admitting "…nor is there evidence that the vaccine prevents transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from person to person, concluding "As this field continues to develop, clinicians and public health practitioners should consider vaccinated persons who become infected with SARS-CoV-2 to be no less infectious than unvaccinated persons."  

The fact that Covid vaccines do not stop this virus from spreading is demonstrated by Israel, Ireland, Gibraltar, and other places with very high vaccination rates, which continue to see high infection and hospitalization rates. Harvard, Cornell, and other universities, despite having vaccination rates of 95percent or above, still had more Covid infections during this 2021-22 academic year than they had last year. The fact is that both unvaccinated Canadians and vaccinated Canadians spread Covid and get sick from Covid.

Universities also ignore the critical medical fact of natural immunity, possessed by those who have recovered from a Covid infection. Research shows that natural immunity to Covid is robust and likely lifelong, referenced here, here, and here. Natural immunity offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study.

Against this backdrop of scientific and medical data, universities ignore the fact that young adults are at an extraordinarily low risk for Covid-19 mortality. For example, amongst people who died with Covid in Alberta, less than one half of one percent were under the age of 30.

While not threatened by Covid, these young adults are also at a heightened risk of various adverse reactions to the new vaccines. For example, the risk of a "cardiac adverse event" in boys is greater than their statistical risk of hospitalization from Covid. Ontario data indicates that males aged 18-24 are at the highest risk of being diagnosed, after vaccination, with the very serious heart conditions myocarditis and pericarditis, at a rate of one in 20,000 after the first dose, and one in 5,000 after the second dose. For young healthy males, the Covid vaccine poses a greater danger than Covid. Since the vaccine does not stop the spread in any event, why push anyone to get it?

In addition to ignoring science, Canada's universities also ignore the Nuremberg Code, which requires that subjects are "to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion. Sadly, the mandatory vaccine policies of universities effectively force and coerce students to get injected, by denying an education (and a career and a future) to those who refuse.

In like fashion, universities ignore the Universal Declaration of Bioethics and Human Rights, which provides that "Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be expressed and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice. Yet "disadvantage and prejudice" is exactly what colleges and universities now inflict on students who want their bodily autonomy respected.

No one, including young people seeking an education, should be coerced or pressured to get any medical treatment, let alone a treatment without long-term safety data and one that is already known to pose serious health risks.

Further, universities are violating the student-university contract, which does not contain any term requiring the student to receive a medical procedure as a condition of pursuing her or his education. Universities have an obligation to abide by their contractual obligations to provide education in return for the tuition they have collected and have no right to add a new term to the contract and demand compliance with the new term.

Prior to 2020, Canada's universities and colleges had already tarnished their reputations as centers of learning and inquiry, by pandering to cancel culture and by aggressively promoting "diversity, inclusion and equity" ideology. Now, by punishing students who exercise their legal right to bodily autonomy, colleges and universities further tarnish their reputation as institutions of reason and science.

Lawyer John Carpay is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms which represents Mariana Costa and Crystal Love against Seneca College.