A federal labour board has ordered the Department of Employment to pay $5,000 in damages to a Christian employee who was suspended for four months after refusing a COVID-19 vaccination on religious grounds.The Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board ruled the department violated the Canadian Human Rights Act when it rejected passport clerk Michelle Tati's request for a religious exemption from the federal government's pandemic vaccination requirements.Adjudicator Adrian Bieniasiewicz found Tati sincerely believed she required God's approval before receiving a vaccination and that her religious convictions were entitled to protection.“When assessing the security of the religious belief being invoked, the Board must consider whether it is advanced in good faith and ensure it is not fictitious, capricious or a contrivance,” Bieniasiewicz wrote.“The sincerity of a belief is a question of fact.”The board concluded Tati's objections were genuine and that the department should have accommodated her religious beliefs.“Her beliefs are neither fictitious, capricious nor made in bad faith and do not constitute a contrivance,” said the ruling.In addition to the $5,000 damages award, Tati was entitled to compensation for overtime earnings lost during her four-month suspension.Tati, a passport clerk earning approximately $55,000 annually, had requested an exemption from the government's mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy, citing her evangelical Christian faith.Supervisors rejected her application and placed her on suspension without pay.In an affidavit submitted to the board, Tati said she had been a practising evangelical Christian since 1988 and believed every aspect of her life must comply with biblical teachings..She maintained that decisions about medical procedures, including vaccinations, required divine approval rather than simply compliance with government directives.“God had instructed her to wait for His approval before submitting to any vaccination,” the board wrote in its summary of her testimony.“A failure to comply with God’s word would be synonymous with going against His word and would expose her to consequences that only God knows.”Tati also objected to the use of fetal cell lines associated with the development or testing of COVID-19 vaccines.“How can I as a practicing Christian agree to be inoculated with a vaccine whose development, production or clinical experimentation includes cells from aborted fetuses?” she wrote.The adjudicator accepted the sincerity of her religious objections and determined the department had failed to respect her rights under federal human rights legislation.The decision adds to a series of labour board rulings awarding compensation to federal employees who faced workplace penalties after refusing COVID-19 vaccinations because of their Christian beliefs.The legal reasoning draws on a landmark 2004 Supreme Court of Canada decision establishing that religious freedom protects sincerely held personal beliefs, even when those beliefs are not universally shared by members of the same faith.In Syndicat Northcrest v. Amselem, the Supreme Court ruled that constitutional protection extends to “freely and deeply held personal convictions or beliefs connected to an individual’s spiritual faith and integrally linked to one’s self-definition and spiritual fulfillment.”The case involved Orthodox Jewish residents of a Montréal condominium complex who challenged restrictions preventing them from erecting temporary religious shelters, known as succahs, on their balconies.The condominium association argued the structures violated building bylaws..In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court sided with the residents and established that courts should focus on whether an individual's religious beliefs are sincerely held rather than determining whether they conform to established religious doctrine.“Sincerity of belief simply implies an honesty of belief and the Court’s role is to ensure a presently asserted belief is in good faith, neither fictitious nor capricious,” the justices wrote.The majority also cautioned against examining a person's religious history to determine whether their current convictions deserve constitutional protection.“It is inappropriate for courts rigorously to study and focus on the past practices of claimants in order to determine whether their current beliefs are sincerely held,” said the ruling.“Because of the vacillating nature of religious belief, a court’s inquiry into sincerity, if anything, should focus not on past practice or past belief but on a person’s belief at the time of the alleged interference with his or her religious freedom.”Several religious organizations intervened in the Supreme Court case, including the World Sikh Organization, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and Jehovah's Witnesses.The federal labour board applied the principle of sincere religious belief in Tati's case, finding her objections to COVID-19 vaccination were protected and that the department's refusal to accommodate her amounted to discrimination.The ruling requires the government to compensate Tati for the violation of her rights and the overtime income she lost while suspended.
