YQR CEO weighs in on prospect of vaccine passports

The introduction of an internationally recognized vaccine passport will streamline the travelling process for vaccinated travellers, according to the Regina Airport Authority’s CEO.

James Bogusz says with travel steadily increasing since the province fully reopened a little over a month ago, the introduction of an official digital COVID-19 vaccine passport will make lineups even shorter.

“For those who are vaccinated and are not necessarily having the same level of rules being applied as those that are unvaccinated, I’m sure they are looking for the simplest way to be processed at an airport,” Bogusz said. “This will be an easier way to be processed at the border. It’s a more efficient way to do so.

“Anything we can do to offer choice and have our Canada Border Services people who do that work to process passengers as effectively as possible (would be helpful). Obviously, we look forward to seeing what the government comes up with.”

Bogusz says the 14-day quarantine that is in place for unvaccinated international travellers might have discouraged travelling to some degree, but he doesn’t anticipate the idea of a vaccine passport impacting whether or not someone decides to take an international flight.

“I think fundamentally, when Canadians are ready to travel — or our citizens here in Regina or southern Saskatchewan are ready to travel again — whether or not they’re going to use that technology doesn’t change whether or not they’re vaccinated,” Bogusz said.

“People are going to do their own risk assessment, regardless if it’s on their phone showing a barcode or if it’s a piece of paper in their pocket. The only difference is the processing behind that.”

Canada’s border reopened to fully vaccinated Americans on Monday, and there is a chance that fully vaccinated foreign travellers from other countries could start coming to Canada more easily in September.

Despite that, both the Regina and Saskatoon airports do not have any international flights coming in directly at the moment, something that Bogusz says he hopes will change in the near future.

“One of the barriers that we still have is the lack of ability to bring in international flights right now,” he said. “The Government of Canada has been prohibiting that for most of the pandemic and they have not yet relaxed that for us or Saskatoon, or other airports of our size.

“We are hopeful and we’ve been pushing hard, hoping and asking them to relax those rules so we can see these fights happen.”