OTTAWA — Health Minister Patty Hajdu says the G7 countries, including Canada, have made a commitment to stay connected and collaborate on the issue of vaccination passports. 

As reported on iPolitics,ca, Canada along with France, Germany, Italy, the U.S., Japan and the UK, took part in a meeting of health ministers on March 30, 2021.

“The G7 partners agreed that there needs to be some consistency and some collaboration among the countries, so we have some kind of system that would be recognizable, no matter where a person was travelling,” Hajdu said.

After some initial reluctance, in recent weeks the federal government has come around to the idea of vaccination passports. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been careful to distinguish between vaccination passports for international travel, and proof of vaccination for use domestically. 

When it comes to certification of vaccinations for international travel, “that’s something that has existed for a long time,” said Trudeau earlier this month. “This is a well-established practice. This is something countries are actively exploring. And we are among those countries.”

In recent days Japan announced that it will pursue vaccination passports, joining other countries including Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Israel. The UK is said to be considering vaccination passports. And the European Commission has laid out its proposal for issuing Digital Green Pass certificates that would allow EU residents to travel freely across the 27-nation bloc by summer 2021, as long as they have been vaccinated, tested negative for COVID-19 or have recovered from the disease.

Meanwhile the IATA Travel Pass took flight on March 15 with Singapore Airlines’ London – Singapore flights.