November 24th, 2021
While the Government of Saskatchewan has required provincial public servants to provide proof of vaccination (or a negative PCR test) as a condition of employment, the Government of Canada (GOC) has only required Federal public servants to sign a form attesting to their full vaccination.
To ensure the legitimacy of those attestations, the Federal Government will be implementing a verification and audit process to validate them.
As of November 15th, being fully vaccinated became a condition of employment for federal public servants. Those who didn’t sign the attestation or submit for accommodation for religious or medical reasons would now be on administrative leave without pay.
Because the GOC doesn’t require public servants to prove their vaccination status like the Government of Saskatchewan, we asked what safeguards the GOC has to ensure the legitimacy of those attestations.
A spokesperson for the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, Geneviève Sicard, said privacy consideration was central to the attestation policy design and implementation.
“The new application to collect vaccination attestations of public servants has purposefully been developed within an existing system in accordance with the government’s privacy and security requirements.”
For public servants, Sicard said, “Employees have an obligation to provide a true attestation, which becomes a record with legal standing. Making a false statement would constitute a breach of the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector and may result in disciplinary action up to and including termination.”
She said that, currently, all information provided through the attestation process is subject to verification. Verification means that Managers can request proof of vaccination at any time to confirm the employee’s attestation. The responsibility to confirm the attestations lies with each department or Ministry.
“Under guidance provided by the Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer, departments and agencies will implement a verification and auditing approach to review and validate employee attestations for completeness and accuracy. The verification and audit function will contribute to maintaining a safe workplace by identifying and acting on false attestations, while ensuring the privacy of employees.”
Sicard didn’t provide a time frame for the audit and verification process to begin but said that more information would be available in due course.
- Jenifer Argue, Local Journalism Initiative reporter
Note: These reports may be abridged for content
