Brian Crombie discusses Covid-19 Vaccine Passports with Alex Vezina, CEO of Prepared Canada and an emergency preparedness expert.

It is likely that the vaccine passport system will have some sort of digital indicator that a given business, like an airport or sports stadium would need to use. Some believe that the government will directly force people to be vaccinated, in a hard paternalistic way saying: “we know what is best for you and you must comply”. Others believe the government may be more indirect and use a soft paternalistic approach like: “you don’t have to be vaccinated, but you also don’t have to get a job in any industry that requires it”. Society has accepted certain paternalistic norms like children attending school until a certain age. Unlike mandatory schooling, the government is likely to receive significant resistance from multiple sectors were it to try to force people with medical exemptions to be vaccinated, whether the forcing is done directly or not.
The fine line between what constitutes a reasonable restriction for safety and what could be argued to be a human rights violation has not been decided yet and changes over time. It may be that individuals who cannot be vaccinated simply cannot interact with the working world as per usual anymore. Those that think the previous statement was hyperbolic may vastly underestimate the difference in deaths between bullets and communicable disease and just how seriously health experts take this issue.