Vaccine Certification Is The Question Of The Day

At an event in Nova Scotia yesterday (July 13), Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was asked the following question:

“Some provinces have started to move towards vaccine passports, others don’t want to us them, but is there not a place for a federal vaccine passport that is standardized so provinces or businesses or any event that may want to use them has a standard known system, that they could use voluntarily.”

Responding to the question, Prime Minister Trudeau said:

“That’s a very good question and from the beginning of this pandemic we’ve worked hand-in-hand with the provinces. We’ve had over 30 First Ministers Meetings since the beginning of the pandemic to make sure that we’re aligned, while at the same time respecting the needs, the decisions, the focus of various jurisdictions on the situations that they’ve been handling.”

He pointed out that:

“The provinces will be making determinations, as you point out, we’ve seen Quebec, for example, move forward with an internal vaccine passport. Alberta has announced that it will not be doing that. Different provinces will be doing different things.”

And the Prime Minister continued:

“Where the federal government has a role to play and where we are looking is in terms of vaccine certification for international travel. You will know that there are countries right now – and countries in the past years that if you went to you had to show proof of vaccination … certain tropical countries, certain tropical diseases … where you had to show proof of vaccination against these tropical diseases.”

He concluded his response, noting that:

“Certainly, the federal government will be working with the provinces to ensure that there is an internationally accepted proof of vaccination that will allow Canadians to travel freely in the coming years. But in terms of domestic reflections on that, that’s something that the provinces themselves will establish as what is right for them.”