The one big problem with vaccine passports

I’m a sucker for Bollywood films. I love that they often fit a number of genres — comedy, musical, drama, and social commentary cleverly rolled into one. Last week, I watched the film English Vinglish starring the late Sridevi. The story revolves around Sridevi’s character, a woman named Shashi, who makes and sells delicious desserts out of her home. Shashi enrolls in a four-week English-speaking course to stop her husband and daughter mocking her lack of English skills and through that journey, gains self-confidence and respect from her family. It is beautifully written and directed by Gauri Shinde, and premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival where it supposedly got a five-minute standing ovation.

There is one scene in particular that resonated with me: Shashi heard someone call her judgemental in English, but all she heard was ‘mental’ and got quite angry that this person said ‘mental’ (in India, mental is a derogatory term meaning crazy). As someone who learned English as a second language, that scene resonated with me a lot. From an early age, I could see that language is a powerful force for inspiring and uniting people — but is also a powerful force that can spur anger, frustration and division. 

Enter this federal election campaign, where protests, mobs, and anger were commonplace —  perhaps at this scale for the first time in recent election history. The protests were often fuelled by what participants had been reading online about COVID-19, vaccines, and pandemic-driven restrictions on economic and social activities and personal liberties. Justin Ling wrote a pointed article in the Maclean’s entitled, ‘The case for anger’, in which he argues: “Throughout 2021, we have let Canadian politeness and duty stand in the way of what should have been a very real, very hot, anger with our political classes [on COVID-19 response]. With few exceptions — notably, many of the big city mayors, and the Atlantic premiers — our politicians were either negligent, absent or actively harmful.” A writer for the National Observer argued, “Much of the anger and opposition to vaccination is propelled by misinformation and conspiracy theories alleging that vaccines are unsafe, harmful, or part of some sort of plot aimed at establishing a biometric surveillance system or other form of government control.” 

But in all of the protests throughout the campaign, there didn’t appear to be a single central organizing body, nor were all the participants affiliated with a single political party. Still, the anger was palpable. Even in my riding Ottawa-Vanier, “Say no to vaccine passports” signs were everywhere — next to almost every party election sign in a public space. At the provincial level too, there has been backlash in almost every province that announced a vaccine passport, whether in Quebec, which was the first out of the gate in Canada or more recently, in Alberta where Premier Kenney hesitantly announced it amidst rising cases. And both in Quebec and in Alberta, vaccine passports continue to be met by many with anger and frustration. 

So, you know the problem with vaccine passports? The name.

The way policies are communicated matters, the way they are marketed matters, the language politicians use matters.

And politicians across the country missed the mark on messaging here. Why is the vaccine passport called a vaccine passport? This doesn’t make much sense to me, my 65-year old immigrant mother or my 6.5 year old mixed-race multilingual daughter.

Names can inspire and unite, or they can spark confusion, frustration and anger. Names can carry negative connotations, regional meanings, and exacerbate ideological tensions. Names can trigger historic trauma. In this case, even for the many informed, and vaccinated people I spoke with, the term ‘vaccine passport’ sounds elitist, the opposite of inclusive, and infringing on personal freedoms because passports, as in the travel document one needs to go overseas, isn’t a mandatory document every citizen is required to carry around in their back pocket. So, why call it a passport? One could say, that’s because traditional passports have a freedom of movement connotation, and that’s what politicians were going for. Well, whether it’s my 65-year old mother or the angry protests on the campaign trail, that connotation clearly didn’t land. 

From time to time, Canada needs a language audit for terms we use to create change in society. Across the country, there is similar confusion, frustration and disagreement with other terms such as universal basic income. The name doesn’t resonate with everyone, because few people can see themselves in the language. Most people can’t seem to define what is meant by ‘universal’ or what is meant by ‘basic’. It’s time Canadians came up with a more inspiring and inclusive term. 

Here’s another one for you: disbursement quota. Why is it called a quota? And why disbursement? Of all the philanthropic leaders and lawyers I’ve spoken to, no one seems to have a clear answer. As a person of colour, at a time when the country is grappling with systemic racism, I can tell you that the word disbursement sounds paternalistic and the word quota isn’t at all inspiring. If we want to mobilize people to get behind a different disbursement quota, then call it something more compelling. 

My last example has to do with COVID-19 and its variants. Here, people seemed to have learned the lesson. The names of the variants are now called Delta (formerly referred to as the India variant) or Beta (formerly referred to as the South Africa variant). I think you can envision the problems that have arisen with the names India variant or South African variant — from confusion to hate crimes, it’s all in there. So, the good news is, we can actually change names, narratives and messaging. It is doable. 

When I was the managing director of Rideau Hall Foundation, I worked on a creative project, what we internally called ‘the language audit’. There were words that the Foundation team was using when engaging stakeholders that just wasn’t resonating. So, we embarked on a four-month language audit process. We listed all the words we use to describe who we are, what we believe in, and what we do, and conducted an extensive listening exercise with stakeholders to learn which words resonated, which ones didn’t and why. Capturing all of this, we then reflected on which words we’d keep, which words we’d drop, and which words we’d find ‘bridging language’ for. As an example, the word ‘hack’, which we used to describe the work we do, didn’t land with most people so we decided to drop it. The word ‘co-create’ was one that resonated with some, so we developed bridging language. In this case, the bridging language is using a familiar analogy to bring people along. Former Governor General David Johnston often used the term ‘barn raising’ in his speeches and talks both internally and with Canadians, as a way to describe how strangers, friends and neighbours have come together in the past in communities to help each other out. So we would say, co-creation is a bit like barn raising, where people from different walks of life bring their knowledge, skills and perspectives to create something together. This approach of using bridging language began to gain traction. And our stakeholders were pleased that we dropped language that they couldn’t get behind. Of all the work I did in the early days of Rideau Hall Foundation, the language audit was one of the most valuable.  

I don’t have a solution for what vaccine passports should be called instead; my mother thinks it should be an immunization record — which we already have and use. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the most inclusive, inspiring or relevant today. At Future of Good, we’re obsessed with language and narratives — historic connotations, nuances, and the power words hold. Through all our social impact coverage, what I’ve learned is that there is an art and science to names, and that many organizations — whether consciously or not — have established cultures that tend to discourage inquiry in the form of someone’s asking, for example, Why are we describing this particular thing in this particular way? 

Vinod Rajasekaran

Publisher & CEO

Tell us this made you smarter | Contact us | Report error