Canada’s vaccine passport won’t come until December, at the earliest

As it stands, each Canadian province and territory issues its own immunization record: Some are entirely paper-based, while others, like Quebec, have begun issuing digital records as well.

As part of its phased plan, Ottawa hopes to get all 13 provinces and territories to issue standardized digital vaccine records by “mid-Fall,” the presentation reads, which “will encourage acceptance by [foreign] countries.” Even if those vaccine records will not be official Government of Canada documents, they will comply with International Civil Aviation Organization standards for proof of vaccination.

Under this plan, Ottawa is aiming to introduce its own vaccine record by December — Canadians will need to submit their provincial or territorial record to receive the Government of Canada proof of vaccine. There would be a “high likelihood countries will recognize a Canadian [proof of vaccine credential].”

According to the presentation, the final product will follow the internationally recognized SMART Health Card standard.

A source with knowledge of the project, who provided the presentation but who was not authorized to speak on the record, said internal discussions have downplayed the idea that the nation-wide vaccine passport would be ready in 2021.

The presentation deck was prepared July 16 but is dated for a July 29 meeting of the “Government of Canada Enterprise Architecture Review Board” — a set of federal officials responsible for the project.

As it stands, Canada has no national health or vaccine registry. In January, Ottawa awarded a C$16 million contract to Deloitte Canada to bridge provincial systems with federal information technology infrastructure.

Ottawa is still aiming to issue a new request for proposals to companies to help develop this vaccine passport.

But as the internal presentation notes, “since this is a new solution there is no current state architecture.”

Canada is getting set to reopen its border to vaccinated Americans on Aug. 9, and to the rest of the world Sept. 7. Since the vaccine passport will not be ready, Ottawa will be relying on an Optical Character Recognition program inside its ArriveCAN application — anyone entering Canada will need to use the app to scan their vaccination record.

As the presentation notes, however, the ArriveCAN app is “unable to verify authenticity” of those vaccine records. The government hopes it will be able to verify the provincial vaccine records once they have been standardized.

Canada won’t be the only country without a digital vaccine passport: The United States has declined to create a national program to recognize its citizens’ vaccines. Vaccinated Americans, however, are all equipped with a standardized Centers for Disease Control and Preventionl vaccine record.

As the Canadian briefing documents note, virtually all of Europe is covered by some form of a vaccine passport, while Australia and New Zealand are on their way to having a uniform digital record as well.