Arbitrator Orders Air Canada to Compensate Pilots Denied Religious COVID-19 Vaccine Exemptions

Seven Christian Air Canada pilots who were denied religious exemptions from the company’s compulsory COVID-19 vaccination policy have been awarded back pay after an arbitrator ruled the airline breached the Canadian Human Rights Act.

According to arbitrator James Hayes’ recent decision, Air Canada violated the act by placing pilots on unpaid leave after determining they did not meet the company’s criteria for a “sincere religious belief,” while other pilots who were deemed to have met the standard were granted more than six months of paid leave.

The airline required those seeking an exemption to provide a letter from a religious leader detailing the reasons why they could not be vaccinated. Most of the pilots complied, and Hayes determined all seven should have been granted exemptions from the beginning, because their requests were based on genuine religious conviction.

“An ‘expert’ or an authority on religious law is not the surrogate for an individual’s affirmation of what his or her religious beliefs are,” Hayes wrote, quoting a 2022 arbitration decision on vaccine mandates. “Religious belief is intensely personal and can easily vary from one individual to another.”

The ruling mandates compensation for the seven Christian pilots, who are members of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), from late October 2021 to early May 2022. The dates were set to align with the earnings of pilots whose exemption requests were approved from the outset.

Arguments

Air Canada told Hayes it granted spiritual accommodations when the request demonstrated a sincere religious belief and a clear link between that belief and an inability to be vaccinated.

The airline said it rejected any request that was made strictly out of fear or personal preference and denied requests based on “scientifically unsound facts,” citing as an example the belief that COVID-19 vaccines could alter DNA.

ALPA, which brought the case before the arbitrator, argued that Air Canada improperly assessed the pilots’ objections through “the lens of scientific validity, rather than asking whether the objections were sincerely held and religious in nature.”

Each pilot submitted what the arbitrator described as a “will-say” detailing why their Christian faith led them to seek vaccine exemptions. While all seven described themselves as Christians, not all of them attended church. Those who did ranged from Catholic to Baptist to non-denominational.

Each pilot pointed to various aspects of belief to explain their vaccine aversion and several said they prayed for God’s direction to make the right decision.

One submitted that introducing a novel substance with unknown long-term consequences “risked defiling what Scripture calls the temple of the Holy Spirit” while another said he could not “knowingly introduce anything into my body that was not created by God and that would alter or interfere with how God designed my body to function.”

One of the other pilots said he believed the COVID-19 vaccines could interfere with the body’s “God-given systems by reprogramming or directing the immune response through artificial means. To me, that represents a manipulation of what God has made complete.”

The arbitrator found “without hesitation” that each pilot’s objection to the vaccine was “grounded in sincere religious conviction” and ordered Air Canada to compensate the pilots for lost income within 60 days.

The Canadian Press contributed to this report.