The right idea, but for the wrong card

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/03/2024 (583 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic presumably in the rearview, there are elements of the pandemic response which have become questionable. Not, perhaps, in terms of efforts made to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus — most Canadians simply followed the science on that as it evolved — but in how public resources were put to that task.

In this case, it would seem proof-of-vaccination efforts in Manitoba amount to considerable overkill and financial waste.

The Free Press reported Monday that the province’s plastic proof-of-vaccination cards came at considerable expense, compared to a paper card: $1.67 per plastic card, to be precise, as opposed to less than a dime for paper. In all, the province spent about $6.2 million on the plastic cards.

In terms of a government budget, $6.2 million isn’t an enormous sum, but it’s not peanuts either. But the expense incurred for the cards is made worse for two reasons: the limits of their usefulness, and the way it bizarrely breaks with local tradition, vis-a-vis health cards.

Even at the height of the pandemic, it appeared clear that requiring proof of vaccination to enter some establishments was a temporary measure; the cards were always going to have an ephemeral role in the lives of Manitobans. In 2024, many of those pricey pieces of plastic bits have wound up in junk drawers across the province alongside old Blockbuster cards.

One wonders what the need was for such a hard, permanent product.

Certainly, it felt good at the time. Then, receiving the COVID-19 vaccine and be issued a shiny new card to prove it was a morale-boosting event which let Manitobans know we were rounding the corner, that life was slowly going to return to normal, that some restrictions could now be eased. And admittedly, the cost didn’t seem so great. In fact, some may have seen the creation of the glossy cards as some measure of proof our health system was taking the matter seriously. Appearances matter.

So, let us not dwell too deeply on whether or not spending the money on the cards back then was the “right” move. Perhaps it wasn’t, but certainly there were bigger mistakes at all levels of government during the worst of the pandemic.

Let us, instead, turn to the here and now, and ask ourselves: what happened to that idea?

New Manitobans, in 2024, are struggling to get their hands on Manitoba Health cards.

But even when they do, the card they receive is flimsy, fragile paper, same as it ever was.

Why?

It’s cheaper, we know that. Considerably cheaper. But Manitoba Health cards aren’t proof-of-COVID-vaccination cards. They’ll be used much more frequently and in many more scenarios. It’s very strange, then, that the provincial government was prepared to shell out for glossy, durable plastic for a temporary public health crisis, but not to suit the everyday needs of Manitobans. (Yes, there was a different provincial government in power then, but the current one appears to be in no rush to redesign things, and the paper health cards have been with us long before the days of the Pallister and Stefanson governments.)

Clearly, the capacity and drive to create plastic health cards for Manitobans exists. And even if they cost more up front, surely the extra durability of the plastic cards will mean fewer are made in the long run, as there will be less need to reprint them.

It would be more than worth the investment.