Seneca College said Monday it will abandon its COVID-19 vaccination policy in the new year, and its president mentioned recent provincial and federal adjustments to the decision.
With campuses in the greater Toronto area, Seneca is one of the latest post-secondary facilities in Canada to have a campus-wide COVID-19 vaccination mandate.
“Unfortunately, but necessarily, I am announcing . . . that Seneca’s vaccination policy will end on December 31, 2022,” President David Agnew wrote on the university’s website.
Agnew said Seneca felt supported in his previous policy through federal and provincial policies that made vaccines mandatory in certain circumstances.
“Now those measures are gone and we cannot independently determine what the prestige of vaccination should look like,” he said.
A Seneca spokesperson said the resolution is similar to the province’s resolution to finalize the Verify Ontario vaccination evidence application and the federal government’s recent resolution to make use of the ArriveCan app optional for foreign travelers.
Students can simply send their vaccination records directly to the university, but Corey Long, the university’s executive director of communications, said it’s harder to determine evidence of vaccination without government platforms.
The university’s announcement comes a month after the Ontario Superior Court rejected an application through two unvaccinated academics asking the court to block Seneca from enforcing its policy.
While others on campus will no longer be required to provide evidence of vaccination starting Jan. 1, the school said it will maintain its mask mandate until additional notice.
Meanwhile, Western University, the last university with a COVID-19 vaccination mandate, announced Monday that it will extinguish its mask requirement until the end of the fall term.
Last month, the University of London, Ontario, extended the deadline for submitting proof of vaccination from Oct. 1 to Jan. 9, 2023, after Health Canada approved an Omicron vaccine.
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