Supporters gather at a candlelight vigil to honour those who lost their lives or were injured by COVID-19 vaccines or mandates, held by the Canada Health Alliance and Vaccine Choice Canada, in Victoria, B.C., on June 18, 2022. (Courtesy Vaccine Choice Canada)
A federal labour relations board has dismissed grievances over the government’s decision to put unvaccinated public servants on leave without pay during the pandemic, according to the workers’ union.
The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) in a Feb. 4 news release said it filed a number of grievances on behalf of members over the policy, which required all federal employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
Ottawa implemented the vaccination policy in October 2021 requiring employees to prove their vaccination status, whether they worked on-site or from home. Workers not doing so would be placed on administrative leave without pay, according to the policy.
The complaints were filed against several federal public service employers, including the Treasury Board, the Canada Revenue Agency, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and Parks Canada, which had put employees on leave without pay because of their vaccination status, the union said in a news release in March 2022.
The union said at the time that it had requested compensation for its members should they continue to be placed on unpaid leave due to the government’s policy. It said the grievances were being filed as the government began to review its vaccination policy six months after its implementation.
The policies were suspended in June 2022.
In its Feb. 4 news release, PSAC said placing employees, including those working remotely, on unpaid administrative leave was “disguised discipline” and an “unreasonable exercise of management rights.”
The union said the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board dismissed the grievances in December 2025, finding that the vaccination policies were within the authority of the employer’s management and that putting employees on leave without pay “did not constitute disciplinary action.”
The union had argued in its grievances in March 2022 that Ottawa’s mandatory vaccination policy to place remote workers on leave without pay constituted “an abuse of management authority because remote workers, who had little to no prospect of returning to physical workplaces in the long term, posed no reasonable threat to the health and safety of their workplaces.”
The Treasury Board told The Epoch Times in an email that it was aware of the labour relations board’s December decision and had no comments.
Other Cases
The decision was issued shortly after the labour relations board in November 2025 granted a federal employee back pay along with $5,000 in damages after his application for religious exemption from the government vaccination policy was rejected.
Mathieu Lemay, a federal employee for 15 years as of 2021, was working at Public Safety Canada when he was put on leave without pay after his employer informed him that his application for vaccine exemption had been denied, according to the decision by the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board.
The decision said Lemay was entitled to damages for “pain and suffering” he experienced resulting from the “loss of dignity and self-worth that he incurred by being placed on leave without pay.”
The employer was also required to provide Lemay with all of the pay and benefits that he would have received if he had remained on the job.
In another case from last year, the federal labour relations board ruled in June 2025 that the Department of National Defence (DND) wrongly rejected an employee’s request for a religious exemption from the vaccine mandate.
The former DND employee and Canadian Armed Forces member, Marvin Castillo, was suspended in 2021 after refusing to take the vaccine.
The ruling noted that Castillo’s “sincere religious belief” should have been sufficient grounds for an exemption from taking the vaccine.
Castillo was ordered to work from home while his exemption request was being considered, according to the ruling. He then went on paid sick leave after his request was denied, followed by unpaid leave, before he decided to retire as a result of his request not being accommodated.
This decision came after earlier decisions by the labour board finding that vaccine mandates infringed on Canadians’ Charter rights. This included a May 2025 ruling that overturned suspensions against a meteorologist and an IT analyst at the National Research Council. Both employees refused the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds.