A divorced man from New Brunswick, Canada, has been blocked by a judge from visiting his three children in person after refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine, according to a report.
Justice Nathalie Godbout ruled in favor of the mother to suspend the father’s rights to in-person visitation, saying that the decision was made with a “heavy heart” but that it was for the best interests of the children, especially the daughter who is receiving specialized care for non-cancerous tumors in her blood vessels.
“As the parents who are caring for [the child] 50 percent of the time, in close quarters, unmasked and unvaccinated, they are well-positioned to transmit the virus to [the child] should they contract it, this despite their best efforts,” Godbout’s ruling read.
The judge also dismissed the research the father said he had done on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on his own. The Canadian government has approved seven COVID-19 vaccines, including ones from Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Janssen (Johnson & Johnson).
“His own anecdotal research on such a highly specialized topic carries little to no weight in the overall analysis when measured against the sound medical advice of our public health officials,” Godbout wrote.
While being denied in-person contact with his children, the father is allowed to have video chats with them via Zoom. The judge ruled that he can return to court to ask back his in-person visitation rights once he gets vaccinated.
The ruling comes weeks after a judge in Montreal issued a temporary safeguard order on an unvaccinated father, blocking him from visiting his 12-year-old son who has already received COVID-19 vaccine shots.
“It would normally be in the child’s best interest to have contact with his father, but it is not in his best interest to have contact with him if he is not vaccinated and is opposed to health measures in the current epidemiological context,” Justice Sébastien Vaillancourt wrote in the Dec. 23, 2021 ruling. The order remains in effect until Feb. 8.
