Canada Will ‘Absolutely’ Require Vaccine Passport for International Travel

Canada will “absolutely” require Chinese coronavirus “vaccine passports” for international travel, the country’s health minister said in an interview with Canadian public radio, Britain’s Independent news outlet reported Monday.

“Canadians need to be able to have the right kind of certification for international travel because, as we know, Canadians will want to travel internationally, and they will want to make sure they have the right credentials to do that from a vaccination perspective,” Canadian Health Minister Patty Hajdu told The House, a radio program of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), on May 1.

“I am meeting on a regular basis with my G7 [Group of Seven] counterparts and this is an ongoing conversation about how that might look and how we might be able to have some sort of standardized approach to this,” Hajdu told the radio program.

The G7 is an intergovernmental organization consisting of Canada, the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan.

“From our perspective, we have a bit of a head start in terms of entry into Canada in that we have ArriveCan, the app that allows for digital proof of [Chinese coronavirus] testing … and a variety of other documents that people have to submit to enter Canada,” Hajdu said.

“We’ll be working with our international partners to make sure that whatever the world lands on, Canadians will have documents in the appropriate format,” she added.

Canada’s ArriveCan is a government-run smartphone app that almost all Canadians are required to show when entering Canada by air or land during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. The Canadian federal government currently requires all travelers entering Canada to observe a mandatory 14-day quarantine period upon arrival and before they are allowed to fully move about the country due to the pandemic.

“The [ArriveCan] app allows air travelers to register when they book into their mandatory three-day stay at a government authorized hotel,” according to the CBC. “The app also allows travelers to register the results of COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus] tests before and after they arrive in Canada, provide details to border agents about their quarantine plans if they cross at a land border, and provide contact information for themselves and the people traveling with them.”

Chinese coronavirus vaccine passports are “naturally to be expected” for international travel, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said late last month.

“As was the case pre-pandemic, certificates of vaccination are a part of international travel to certain regions and are naturally to be expected when it comes to this pandemic and the coronavirus. How we actually roll that out in alignment with partners and allies around the world, it’s something that we’re working on right now,” Trudeau told reporters at a press conference on April 27.

“We continue to plan for how we reopen the economy, how we reopen our borders, how we get back to normal,” the prime minister added.