By Andy Clark

Huddle recently published a commentary entitled, Vaccine Passports Are Not A Big Deal. In my view, nothing could be further from the truth. Whether you are in favour of them or not, make no mistake: Vaccine passports are a very big deal. They fundamentally alter the relationship between our government and its citizens. They go to the very root of what it means to be Canadian.

Canada is supposed to be one of the most — if not THE most — inclusive countries in the world. Yet the effect of vaccine passports is to exclude, to divide, and to discriminate based on personal medical choices.

Proponents of vaccine passports argue that those who have decided not to take Covid-19 vaccines should not be allowed in public places like restaurants, bars, concerts, gyms, and so on. In other words, they believe that unvaccinated people should be excluded from several aspects of public life.

Think about that for a moment. Unvaccinated people should be excluded from several aspects of public life. What if you were to replace, in the previous sentence, the word Unvaccinated with Catholic, or Liberal, or Conservative, or Divorced, or Elderly, or any other group of people sharing a common characteristic? That wouldn’t sound very Canadian, would it?

While there is undoubtedly and unfortunately systemic discrimination of disadvantaged people in Canada, in no other context is it okay to publicly discriminate against a specific group of people. But that’s exactly what we are doing with the promotion of vaccine passports. History has shown us that purposefully discriminating against and segregating certain groups of people — particularly in the context of “government knows best”— always leads to regrettable, if not horrendous, consequences.

Vaccine passports run counter to the legal and moral fabric of our country. If we implement vaccine passports (or any variation of a “no jab, no work/no school/no entry policy”), we violate the doctrine of informed consent to medical treatment. Informed consent is only achieved when people are able to make personal medical choices free from coercion. It is a cornerstone of free societies. It is protected by Canadian common law, by our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and by international law.

Personal medical choices, such as the decision whether or not to take Covid-19 vaccines, should be made only within the context of what a person considers to be in his or her best interests from a personal health perspective.

Vaccine passports and other mandatory vaccination policies turn a personal medical decision into a decision not about health outcomes, but about choosing between the right to informed consent to medical treatment and the right to participate fully in society. That is coercion with a capital “C”. That is a very big deal and is not what this country should stand for.

We know that there are high-risk and low-risk groups in terms of the likelihood of serious illness or death from Covid-19. Therefore, the riskbenefit analysis for Covid-19 vaccines can vary widely from person to person based on their individual circumstances. The analysis is vastly different for a 17-year-old than it is for a 77-year-old, or for someone in excellent health vs. someone with several underlying health conditions.

When it comes to personal medical choices, even people of similar age and circumstances can arrive at different decisions and both be right in terms of what they deem best for themselves and their families. Free and democratic societies respect that.

As Canadians, do we really want to go down the path of excluding fellow citizens from aspects of public life for making a choice that may be different from that of the majority? Do we really want to become a “show us your papers” society? If we do, we will all be stepping on the most slippery of slopes, and that is a very big deal.

Perhaps more than anything, vaccine passports are a big deal because of the questionable premise on which they are based — that is, that vaccinated people must be protected from Covid-19 by protecting them from unvaccinated people. But aren’t vaccinated people protected from Covid-19-related illness by Covid-19 vaccines?

We have been encouraged since the day vaccines became available, and every day since, to get vaccinated precisely because they are so highly effective at preventing Covid-19 — in Pfizer’s case, 100 percent protection against serious disease, according to the company. So why the need for vaccinated people to also be protected from the unvaccinated?

Adding to the confusing messaging on this topic is the recent announcement by the director of America’s leading disease control agency that vaccinated people and unvaccinated people can similarly transmit the delta variant to others. This runs counter to the prevailing narrative that only the unvaccinated spread the virus, and it further undermines the supposed need for vaccine passports.

Are these contradictions and mixed messages really the basis on which we can justify the discrimination, segregation, and limits on personal freedom that vaccine passports create?

If vaccine passports are implemented in Canada, let’s make sure we do it with eyes wide open. Let’s make sure we are prepared to alter what it means to be Canadian. Let’s understand that we are unwinding the legal and moral fabric of our country and that we are repeating mistakes of our past.

Let’s admit that vaccine passports, while disguised as a public health measure, are in reality a punishment for people exercising their legal rights to informed consent to medical treatment. And let’s be clear that all of this is a very big deal.

Andy Clark is a business owner, father of four schoolaged children, and a member of the New Brunswick Law Society and the Canadian Bar Association. He lives in Fredericton.

Originally published at: huddle.com https://huddle.today/vaccine-passports-are-a-very-bigdeal/