PAPERS PLEASE

Want to eat out, work out or sit in a movie theatre today? You'll need your passport

Businesses are bracing for Ontario’s first day of vaccine passports Wednesday.

And they aren’t thrilled about it.

“The government has turned the hospitality industry into a triage for COVID,” said Larry Isaacs, president of the Firkin Group of Pubs.

Tens of thousands of small businesses like his will start a new chapter in the long COVID-19 saga, which has been pulverizing their bottom lines for 19 months.

The responsibility to track customers’ passports, Isaacs said, is an unfair burden.

“We have to monitor the masks, 6 feet apart, ‘Can we take all your details in case we have to COVID trace you?’ and now we’ve become the passport police, as well.”

Isaacs said he worries younger staff might be exposed to unnecessary conflict when demanding and verifying passports.

He said he also doesn’t understand why the passport isn’t necessary for any of his employees, yet mandatory for customers.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) wrote a letter to Premier Doug Ford last week on the issue.

The CFIB said it polled its 38,000 Ontario members and found 45% support the institution of vaccine passports, 40% are against the initiative, and 15% were undecided.

“Many of them feel that government is downloading the responsibility to them,” said Julie Kwiecinski, CFIB’S director of provincial affairs for Ontario.

Many of them fear this added burden will come with the potential for conflict.

“For a lot of these businesses, it’s not like they went to police college to figure out how to do de-escalation,” said Kwiecinski. “We have had some members who have been receiving threats against their staff if they proceed with this.”

The CFIB wants clarity on what constitutes a legal exemption for being vaccinated and how it can be proven in places like restaurants or gyms.

It also said labour shortages already hindering some businesses could get worse if they need to hire more staff to verify vaccine passports.

“Some of these businesses will be placed in very untenable, unfortunate positions that they’re not comfortable with,” Kwiecinski said.