Canadians Endorse Vaccine Passports, European Union Moving Ahead With The Idea

March 3, 2021 Jim Byers

The European Union is endorsing the idea of vaccine passports, and a poll of Canadians finds considerable support for the idea in Canada.

According to the website Euronews, the EU “has announced it will be outlining its proposal for a digital vaccine passport this month, in time for the summer tourism season.”

Rather than a traditional passport, a vaccine passport is more of a declaration of health or a supplementary piece of paper or digitized document that states if someone has had a vaccine or if they’ve had COVID-19. Testing information also could be included.

This means that, in theory, people could gain unrestricted access to flights, restaurants, bars, tourist attractions and festivals. It also means quarantine protocols, such as mandatory, 14-day hotel stays, could be avoided, Euronews stated.

We previously addressed this issue in a column about vaccine passports.

Meanwhile, a poll by ipolitics.ca finds that Canadians generally support the idea of a vaccine passport.

Asked if Canada should develop such a certificate, 35% of those surveyed said they strongly agreed, while another 21% said they somewhat agreed. Nine per cent of respondents said they somewhat disagree, while 17% said they strongly disagree. Eighteen per cent of those surveyed said they had no opinion.

When they asked Canadians what their travel plans were post-pandemic, 56 per cent said they would travel internationally within a year, and 81 per cent said they’d travel internationally after a year had elapsed.

If you break it down, the survey found that 20 per cent of Canadians said they’d travel internationally within three months of the pandemic being over (although one’s definition of “being over” would clearly vary from person to person). Seventeen per cent of respondents said they’d travel within three to six months, while 19 per cent said they’d wait six months to a year.

Fewer than two in 10 Canadians (19 per cent) said they wouldn’t travel internationally at all.

WestJet CEO Ed Sims has endorsed the vaccine passport concept, but said it’s still early to talk about such a program north of the border.

“Canada as a country has slipped from about sixth in the world for vaccine distribution to the mid-60s. So it’s really hard for us to start talking to our population about mandatory vaccine passports when we don’t have vaccines in the country. There are significant privacy concerns within Canadian legislation and those will have to be overcome before we get widespread support of vaccine passports,” Sims said during a chat on Eurocontrol’s Aviation Straight Talk.

As for Europe, the head of the European Union, Ursula Von der Leyen, said she’ll put forward legislation for a ‘digital green pass’ for the EU this month.

Some observers, and some countries, have said the idea is discriminatory. “If only vaccinated people can travel, that favours folks in richer countries with vaccines and hurts poor folks who may not have access to inoculations,” is how the argument often goes.

But tourism-dependent countries such as Spain and Greece say they desperately need travellers to keep their economies from tanking, and that they’re willing to accept the negative aspects of a vaccine passport or vaccination certificate.

The European Commission is expected to lay out draft legislation on March 17.



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