Alberta’s Human Rights Tribunal has ruled that a workplace dispute over a vaccine mandate must proceed to a hearing, setting the stage for a key test of religious freedom in employment decisions.
Blacklock's Reporter says the case centers on an oil and gas worker who refused the COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds, arguing that his beliefs, rooted in the Ten Commandments, prohibited him from complying with his employer’s mandate.
“There is a genuine issue to be resolved,” wrote tribunal adjudicator Wilma Shim, overturning an earlier decision by human rights commissioners who dismissed the complaint.
Thomas Elliott, a self-described “born again, charismatic Christian,” was suspended without pay by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. for refusing vaccination. He claimed religious discrimination, stating that his Christian faith required adherence to the Bible as “the one and only true word of God.”
According to the tribunal’s ruling, Elliott argued that vaccines were developed and tested using fetal cell lines derived from abortion, which he believes to be murder. “To take the vaccine would be complicit with murder,” he claimed.
“This is not a case where the complainant has made a bare assertion that his Christian faith requires him to refuse vaccination,” the tribunal wrote. “He has provided what he alleges is Scriptural authority for his belief that accepting the vaccine would be a sin.”
Canadian Natural Resources countered that Elliott’s pastor had not explicitly mentioned vaccines in a letter submitted as part of the complaint. However, Shim ruled that spiritual beliefs need not be narrowly defined to be legitimate.
“The complainant stated adherence to Scripture is a tenet of the Christian faith and that his eternal salvation depends on obedience to God’s will as expressed in Scripture,” the tribunal noted.
“God has the power to grant eternal life in heaven or cast one into hell. The complainant provided Scriptural authority for these statements. The complainant clearly has sincere and deeply held beliefs.”
Scientists have acknowledged that “fetal cell lines” were used in the production of Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines during the pandemic, though they maintain that the vaccines themselves contain no fetal cells or tissue.
“Fetal cell lines are cells that are grown in a laboratory,” the Public Health Association of B.C. explained in a statement. “They descend from cells taken from fetuses aborted in the 1970s and 1980s.”
The tribunal cited the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2004 ruling in Syndicat Northcrest v. Amselem, which affirmed that religious freedoms must be broadly interpreted. “The state is in no position to be, nor should it become, the arbiter of religious dogma,” the court wrote.
The decision in that case involved Orthodox Jews in Montréal accused of violating condo bylaws by erecting temporary religious shelters on their balconies.
The court ruled that sincerity of belief, rather than strict doctrinal consistency, was the key test for religious accommodation. “Sincerity of belief simply implies an honesty of belief,” the court stated, adding that an individual’s convictions need not be entirely consistent or literal to be protected.