Passport holders have access to the myriad public and commercial facilities that make up modern life without having to obey COVID control protocols imposed by health authorities. Importantly, they can travel abroad freely to countries that accept the passports as evidence of their immunity. The personal, economic, and social benefits brought by this feature are obvious.
The most fundamental criticism of the system arises from the concern that businesses will decide to serve only passport holders and thus cause other Canadians to suffer systemic discrimination akin to that suffered by other minorities whose conditions presently are such a great political issue.
Most Canadians who suffer would be waiting to be vaccinated. A small number could not be vaccinated for medical or religious reasons. An unknown number would refuse to be vaccinated because they distrust the health care system or government policies generally.
How realistic is the concern that businesses will serve only passport holders?
For one, it’s illegal for Canadian businesses to refuse service to customers.
More important is that the profit motive will lead businesses to deal with all-comers. Non-passport holders will bring sales, and businesses will want to retain their good will that will bring them back when the pandemic is over. Customers with and without passports can be served in two different sections of restaurants, theaters, and recreation facilities with health protocols applied in only one of them.
Not all businesses can operate with two sections serving the two different groups of customers. For example, cruise ship lines that already have announced they will serve only passengers with proof of immunity, can’t effectively operate separate sections.
However, if existing laws and the profit motive don’t work as expected, Fairness Warriors can demand the adoption of regulation preventing it, which is likely to fall on sympathetic ears in Canadian governments.
This policy is unlikely to gain significant support from Canadians who have much greater faith in government than most Americans. Moreover, the passports are just like other government-issued identification documents such as drivers’ licenses and travel passports as well as the documents showing vaccination against yellow fever and other communicable diseases that were used widely in the past. They involve an invasion of privacy but are used because they bring public benefits greater than costs.
These problems can be avoided by attaching modules to existing government systems that electronically store private tax, social security, and health care information and protect it with pervasive safety protocols. These modules would store information about the vaccination status of individuals, including their pictures, which can be accessed by passport holders using either mobile phones or paper documents showing a QR code readable by ubiquitous electronic scanners.