Senior army commander says 90% of military personnel are fully vaccinated

A senior military commander in Western Canada says he doesn'texpect much opposition from Canadian Forcespersonnel over mandatoryCOVID-19 vaccinations.

Ottawa is requiring federal employees, including members of themilitary, be fully vaccinated by the end of this month. Thegovernment also expects employers in federally regulated industries,including banks and airlines, to do the same.

Brig.-Gen. Bill Fletcher, who's responsible for Western Canada's3rd Canadian Division, oversees the training ofCanadian soldiersand operations from the Pacific Ocean to Thunder Bay, Ont.

There are almost 12,000 regular and reserve forces under hiscontrol.

"It's been made very clear by the government that we will followthe same direction that the government has given the public serviceand we will enforce mandatory vaccines across the Canadianmilitary," Fletcher said in an interview from his office inEdmonton.

He said more than 90 per cent of Canadian military personnel arealready double vaccinated and he's not worried about any pushbackfrom what he calls a small percentage.

"We'd already been dealing with the implication for deployments... of non-vaccinated folks going into a COVID-hot environment orgoing into an international setting where the host country has said,'you will be double vaccinated,"' he said.

"Those folks ultimately have to make a decision on whetherthey'll be vaccinated."

He said he couldn't comment on what would happen to personnel whoare not vaccinated. But the federal government has said publicservants will be put on unpaid administrative leave if they aren'tvaccinated by Oct. 29.

Fletcher said responding to COVID-19 has been a learning processfor the Canadian Forces, because it was "nothing that anybody hadever talked about in any of my army training."

Helped distribute vaccine

Members of the military, he added, have helped with both pandemicassistance and vaccine distribution across the country.

Some calls for assistance included COVID-19 outbreaks in remotenorthern communities such as Shamattawa First Nation in Manitoba,Fond du Lac Denesuline First Nation in Saskatchewan and Fort NelsonFirst Nation in British Columbia.

Fletcher said it's been positive for the mental health of armypersonnel to be able to help out during the pandemic,becausesitting around home with their families during the early stages"grew old pretty quickly."

"They're women and men who didn't join to sit at home. Itstarted taking a toll, I think, from a mental-health perspective,certainly from a training perspective," Fletcher said.

"We had soldiers who were considering releasing actually ... to be able to respond on behalf of Canadians. So Ithink it was very cathartic. We got back into doing what soldierswanted to do."