EDMONTON—Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has said her government will move ahead with amendments to the Human Rights Code to make it illegal to discriminate based on COVID-19 vaccination status.
Smith, who won the premiership earlier this month following a United Conservative Party leadership race, first announced the policy change while campaigning for the party leadership.
Speaking at the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, Smith said she wanted to give businesses that are still discriminating on the basis of vaccination status “fair warning” that the policy change is coming this fall.
“We are going to be making a serious pivot in that regard,” Smith said.
“And I would just ask if you would work with us to align your policies with the direction that we want to go in Alberta, because we want to send the message to the community and to the world community and to the investment markets, that this is a place that is open for business, that this is a place that believes in freedom.”
The new premier also said Alberta is a place that believes in free enterprise and it’s not going to make arbitrary decisions that “disproportionately impact the small and medium businesses in this province.”
The announcement comes after Smith last week said in her first press conference just hours after being sworn in as premier that those who didn’t get vaccinated for COVID-19 are the “most discriminated-against group” she has seen in her lifetime.
“This has been an extraordinary time in the last year in particular, and I want people to know that I find that unacceptable,” Smith said on Oct. 11. “We are not going to create a segregated society on the basis of a medical choice.”
During the pandemic, Alberta implemented a vaccine passport system and shut down businesses and places of worship, similar to other provinces.
Smith later issued a statement to “clarify“ her remarks.
In the Oct. 12 statement, Smith said her intention was to underline the mistreatment of unvaccinated individuals.
“I want to be clear that I did not intend to trivialize in any way the discrimination faced by minority communities and other persecuted groups both here in Canada and around the world or to create any false equivalences to the terrible historical discrimination and persecution suffered by so many minority groups over the last decades and centuries,” she wrote.
