When it comes to Ontario’s vaccine passport system, where there’s a political will, there’s a way

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Ontario has finally done what was glaringly obvious would be necessary months ago – implement a proof-of-vaccination requirement for public spaces like restaurants, bars, gyms, and sporting venues.

Yet, the new rules won’t take effect until Sept. 22 – three weeks from now – and, in the short-term, it will be a paper-based system. There won’t be an electronic version of the vaccine certificate until Oct. 22.

The breadth and depth of the ineptitude on display here boggles the mind.

As Ontario Premier Doug Ford said: “It’s no secret, this is something I didn’t want to do.” His base doesn’t want any public-health restrictions, and some of them don’t want vaccines either.

Full credit to the Premier for changing his mind, based on advice from public health. Not enough politicians do so.

But that doesn’t excuse months of doing nothing.

Israel unveiled its “green pass” way back in February. A couple of dozen European countries followed suit.

Canada did not. Ontario did not.

Who is to blame for this? That’s debatable.

More sticks, but also more carrots: How to reach Canadians who are still unvaccinated

Canada needs a national vaccine passport, now. Quebec has the answer

Ottawa created a vaccine passport for international travel but seemed less keen to wade into provincial jurisdiction to create a single proof-of-vaccination system, especially when some provinces said they would not share their data. But the feds did offer $1-billion to the provinces to create their own programs.

Provincial plans trickled out one by one – Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, British Columbia and now Ontario. Like everything else COVID-related, we have a largely incomprehensible patchwork of rules.

Mr. Ford is pointing the finger at the federal government for inaction, which is hypocritical. When he vowed to resist vaccine passports because they would create a “split society,” the Premier didn’t urge Ottawa to act. Quite the opposite.

But never mind petty and partisan politics.

There are three principal reasons proof-of-vaccination programs are necessary, beneficial and were largely inevitable:

1) To reward the vaccinated with more freedom; 76 per cent of eligible Ontarians have received two shots and that civic gesture should be rewarded.

2) To induce the unvaccinated to get shots (see #1); virtually everyone hospitalized or in critical care with COVID-19 is unvaccinated or not fully vaccinated and that’s prolonging the pandemic.

3) To provide clear rules that benefit businesses and the general public; what has finally moved the wheel on this is business leaders demanding proof-of-vaccination rules so they can avoid further lockdowns.

Early in 2021, as vaccination rollouts picked up steam around the world and public-health restrictions melted away, it became clear that there needed to be a way to distinguish the vaccinated from the unvaccinated.

We should have started developing apps then, not in September.

There’s really no excuse for all the dithering on proof-of-vaccination programs at any level of government.

More puzzling still is why Ontario finds it necessary to reinvent the wheel.

On Wednesday, Kaleed Rasheed, Ontario’s Associate Minister of Digital Government said his team was working around theclock to create a secure product by Oct. 22.

Here’s another idea: Pick up the phone and call your Quebec counterpart and ask them to share the VaxiCode app.

By all appearances, Quebec has created a first-rate proof-of-vaccination system. You flash a QR code, for example at a restaurant, your vaccine status is displayed, then it disappears with no permanent record. It’s like vaccine Snapchat.

Why can’t Ontario simply copy it?

Quebec’s app is already in use – its proof-of-vaccination requirements became mandatory on Sept. 1 – and the bugs are being worked out.

The VaxiCode app has already been hacked too, which is actually good news. Hackathon veterans found flaws in the program, and notified provincial officials on how to fix them. That they were threatened with criminal charges instead of given a medal shows the small-mindedness of the bureaucracy.

What Canada needs right now, given that a single national proof-of-vaccination app seems unlikely, is an investment in interoperability – meaning the various provincial apps should be able to “talk” to each other. Practically, someone travelling from Quebec to B.C. should be able to show proof of vaccination easily.

This is not a tremendous technical challenge. In fact, it’s a problem that could probably solved pretty easily by an undergrad computer-sciences class.

But the political will has to be there.

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