An accountant fired by WestJet for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine has been awarded nearly $66,000 in damages by a Calgary judge.
Justice Aldo Argento ordered the airline to pay Duong Yee $65,587.72—equivalent to 11 months’ salary—for her termination on December 1, 2021, after she declined to be vaccinated.
Yee, an 11-year employee at the time, had applied for a religious exemption, but WestJet denied her request.
However, Argento ruled that he didn’t need to assess the case through the lens of religious discrimination. Instead, he determined Yee had been wrongfully terminated, noting that her refusal to get vaccinated had no bearing on her job performance or workplace safety, since she was working remotely.
“The plaintiff’s refusal to comply with the company’s vaccination policy did not impact her job performance,” Argento wrote in his decision. “It did not endanger the defendant’s employees or the public as the plaintiff was working from home. While a future, partial return to work was anticipated, that was not yet implemented.”
Argento also found that federal vaccine mandates introduced by Ottawa only applied to employees physically working on WestJet property—such as airports—and not to remote staff like Yee.
“The regulations only required the defendant’s employees who were physically accessing ‘aerodrome property’ to be vaccinated,” he stated. “They would not have applied to the plaintiff while she continued to work from home.”
Argento criticized WestJet for failing to consider remote work as a viable alternative to termination, noting that Yee had already been working from home for six months at the time of her dismissal and that her role required no special accommodation.
“It is significant that dismissal was not the only option available,” he wrote. “Even though the defendant’s vaccination policy stipulated that anyone failing to comply would be subject to discipline up to and including termination for cause, the defendant did not have to proceed in this fashion.”
Yee also sought $21,500 in moral damages, but Argento declined that request, finding that her termination was not handled in an “unduly insensitive or egregious manner.”