Ontario Premier Doug Ford.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Premier Doug Ford accidentally sent a message last week to the millions of Ontarians who have so far resisted COVID-19 vaccination: Stay strong and keep your head and sleeves down; in as little as three months, you could be in the clear.
Surely it wasn’t the intention of the province to give the unvaccinated a date after which their efforts to resist the shot will be rewarded (just 82 sleeps!). But that was the latent effect – the dumb consequence, if you will – of announcing that as of Jan. 17, 2022, Ontario could start lifting proof of vaccination requirements in settings such as bars and restaurants. By the end of March, if all goes according to plan, Ontario will lift all health and workplace COVID-19 safety requirements, including mask mandates and any remaining vaccine certificate programs.
Mr. Ford was careful to couch these mostly arbitrary reopening dates with vague conditions: “Let me reinforce the word cautious,” he said. “We have always been cautious and I’m going to be super cautious. If we do not see the numbers in a stable place, we just aren’t going to do it.” Mr. Ford did not say whether the province has specific benchmarks against which it will determine whether to move ahead with dropping proof of vaccination programs.
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Just this week, Ontario loosened some restrictions in response to current conditions. Restaurants, bars, gyms and other establishments that have been subject to certain capacity limits can now operate at full occupancy, and other settings that have not been required to adopt proof of vaccination programs – such as hair salons – can start operating at maximum capacity if they choose to start asking for vaccine receipts.
These new changes are justified by Ontario’s declining case trends (the seven-day average of new daily cases is down roughly 11 per cent over last week), the relatively decent state of hospitals (Ontario will have accepted 19 critical COVID-19 patients from Saskatchewan by Wednesday), its high vaccination rates (which continue to increase) and the fact that sports arenas and concert halls have been able to operate at full capacity for the last two weeks. Ontario did not see a spike in cases after the Thanksgiving holiday, and so far, outbreaks in schools have been mostly contained.
But while these are all good reasons to continue a gradual loosening of restrictions, they do not provide any reason why the province should announce a tentative date for dropping vaccine requirements in the future.
We know from provincial data that vaccine mandates have been successful in increasing vaccine uptake. With no specific end date, individuals have faced the prospect of being excluded from recreational activities indefinitely, even though most understand that the pandemic will be over eventually and so too will vaccine requirements. But the uncertainty of when that will happen has compelled some to get the shot, despite their reservations. Mr. Ford’s announcement of a speculative date to phase out vaccine requirements replaces that uncertainty with a finite period for which the unvaccinated merely have to sit tight. Indeed, it’s hard to commit to sitting on the social sidelines for an undetermined period of time; it’s much easier to stick to your convictions if you know it will just be another few months.
Furthermore, it’s not as if the policy creates substantial hardships for businesses (in the same way that capacity limits might, for example), nor is it particularly arduous for consumers, who simply have to take out their phones and pull up their receipts before entering the gym or restaurant. Certainly these measures were always intended to be temporary, but pegging their dissipation to dates – not conditions – is yet another symptom of a government fatally preoccupied with being liked. Mr. Ford is so eager to be the champion of the revival – to shed the province of these burdensome conditions, especially in anticipation of the Ontario election in June.
The worst case scenario now is that this new Jan. 17 expiration date disincentivizes new vaccinations, and also has to be delayed next year because of increasing case rates after Christmas and the waning efficacy of COVID-19 shots. That waning immunity might explain why the U.K., for example, which was one of the earliest countries to vaccinate its population, has recently seen a surge in new cases.
Ontario has made extraordinary progress over the last few months in getting its case counts down and its vaccination numbers up. Mr. Ford’s announcement, however, could see that vaccination numbers stagnate, which is the last thing the province needs if it wants to quash COVID-19 for good. Mr. Ford’s desire to tease the post-COVID party early might mean the celebration actually comes later than he intended.
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Robyn Urback