A new online Leger poll suggests a deep divide among both Canadians and Americans when it comes to the idea of vaccine “passports.” And while the survey found 52 percent of Canadian respondents supported showing proof of vaccination, compared with 43 percent of Americans, government leaders seem further apart.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki unequivocally ruled the idea out this week – an indication that requiring proof of vaccination would be a tough sell in a country that prizes individual liberties.
“The government is not now, nor will we be, supporting a system that requires Americans to carry a credential,” Psaki said.
In contrast, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has signalled willingness to consider it.
“We will continue to work with our partners in the United States and internationally to ensure that this is done properly,” he said Tuesday about how best to reopen the Canada-US border.
But he added, “We have already seen the importance of proof of vaccination for international travel… in a pre-pandemic period in recent years. It will surely be important, but the details of what we are going to do about it, we are still fine-tuning.”
The Leger poll was conducted last month for the Association for Canadian Studies and the Canadian Institute for Health Research at the University of Manitoba.
The survey showed that, among US respondents, 36 percent opposed the idea of a digital passport, compared with 33 percent of Canadians. (Online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.)
Paski said the priority for the White House will be to protect the “privacy and rights” of US residents “so that these systems are not used against people unfairly. “There will be no federal vaccinations database and no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential.”
In any case, the prospects of the issue coming to a head any time soon appear remote. In a news conference on Tuesday, Prime Minister Trudeau said, “We’re not there yet,” when it comes to prospects of re-opening the border, as Canada faces a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Canada-US border has been closed to non-essential traffic since March 20, 2020, with restrictions – currently through April 21 – having been regularly extended a month at a time since then.