Mandatory Vaccination In Canada

One of the greatest medical advancements throughout human history was the creation of vaccines. The success of vaccines made many previously common childhood diseases become almost rare. Although approximately 400,000 children are vaccinated in Canada each year (qtd. in Picard), there is still a large portion of Canadian children that not receiving the necessary vaccinations. This is occurring because Canada does not have any federal laws in place to enforce children to be vaccinated. Fortunately, Canada’s Constitution allows mandatory vaccination law to be implemented at the provincial and territorial level. To ensure the health and safety of individuals and communities, provincial and territorial governments should make vaccinations mandatory for all Canadian children so that immunity towards dangerous illnesses is maintained and outbreaks of highly contagious diseases are prevented. …show more content…
If governments enforced mandatory vaccinations for all Canadian children, society would maintain efficient immunity from vaccine-preventable diseases and the likelihood of epidemics would decrease. As aforementioned, having every child in Canada receive vaccinations would result in “herd immunity” which guarantees protection and prevention for all members of society. This concept would not work if too many children are unvaccinated which, in the case of an outbreak, would put the lives of everyone, regardless of their vaccination status, at risk. Although parents have the authority to raise their own children however they wish to, it should not be at the expense of another child’s health. There must be a line in which the rights of parents are overruled by their responsibilities as members of society to ensure the safety of their child and whomever their child interacts with, especially in the cases when the cause of a child’s illness or death was