Vaccine Passports Coming in July; Poll Says Canadians Want Hotel Quarantine Abolished

Vaccine Passports Coming in July; Poll Says Canadians Want Hotel Quarantine Abolished

June 17, 2021 ctn_admin

The Trudeau government will soon unveil the first part of its vaccine passport or vaccine certification program for travellers coming into Canada, published reports say. A federal government poll, meanwhile, shows that a strong majority of Canadians are tired of the hotel quarantine program and want it abolished.

The CBC quotes an unnamed government source as saying that, beginning in early July, a new feature on the ArriveCan app will go live. The app, which arriving passengers are supposed to use now to provide their information to Canadian authorities, “will allow travellers to take a photo or upload a snapshot of their vaccine documentation into the app 72 hours before travelling,” the CBC said.

That update would, in turn, make it easier for the government to phase in changes to international travel restrictions.

The Toronto Star today reports that the Liberal government will soon unveil the first part of a two-phase system.

“Initially, Ottawa will rely on the provincial vaccination certificates that Canadians may already have, and ask inbound travellers to upload those into an app called ArriveCAN,” Transport Minister Omar Alghabra told the paper. “By the fall, travellers will use an automated system that connects to “provincial databases, but respects the privacy of the individual,” he said.

The federal government last week said it hopes to bring in changes to the current entry rules by early July. The plan is to allow fully vaccinated Canadians to come into the country without needing to do a 14-day quarantine or the dreaded three-day hotel quarantine. Instead, they would take a COVID-19 test before they depart for Canada and then another test after they arrive. They would have to quarantine at home only until they get their test result, which is usually just a day or two.

Critics have said that same courtesy should be extended to fully vaccinated foreign visitors, but it appears there are some technical difficulties with that. Still, if one reads the tea leaves it seems that those visitors might enjoy the same privileges sometime in July or August, which would help Canadian tourism operators a great deal and help them salvage some of the summer season.

The Star said it has obtained internal government polls that show 64% of Canadians feel that mandatory hotel quarantine should be abolished for fully vaccinated travellers, while 60% favour getting rid of the program for everyone.

There’s also the matter of the Canada-U.S. border. The calls for the border to open, at least to some degree, have been building steadily in both countries in the past couple weeks. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke to provincial premiers and territorial leaders about the issue last night, Global News reports.