An anti-vaxxer I’m not. Got both my shots and my booster. I’m part of the 90 per cent (3,893,147) of British Columbians who have received their second dose and part of the 31.2 per cent (1,351,017 as of Friday) who have received a third dose.
At the risk of offending my anti-vax friends … wa-hoo.
I’m also part of the unknown percentage, although probably high, of the population who are increasingly annoyed at the anti-vaxxers who continue their selfish ways, which now include accounting for 30.4 per cent of all those hospitalized for COVID-19. That’s right, 10 per cent of the population make up 30 per cent of hospitalizations. You’d almost think it was our justice system and the Indigenous population. That’s a story for another time.
I should also point out that not all of the 10 per cent who aren’t vaccinated are, necessarily, anti-vaxxers. There are some who legitimately haven’t been able to get vaccinated. Most of those, I suspect, are marginalized people. Some will have legitimate health reasons. I’m not annoyed at them. It’s those who are vehemently opposed to the vaccine, claiming it’s a ‘freedom’ issue (which now includes the Conservative Party of Canada), who are the problem. And I, like many others, feel there should be consequences to that segment of the population as their actions are having consequences to the rest of society.
That being said, Quebec Premier Francois Legault’s plan to tax the unvaccinated is a step too far. Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s right. Just look at TikTok.
Firstly, we know nothing about how the tax will be applied as Legault, who threw out the trial balloon last week, hasn’t released any details. That doesn’t stop us from having visions of checking into a Quebec hospital to be greeted by an LPN who takes our vitals and a CFO who … well, takes our vitals.
That’s about as contrary to the Canada Health Act and universal health care as you can get.
Or does Legault plan to collect it at tax time? That, of course, would do nothing to alleviate the crush of Omicron cases flooding hospitals right now.
Is Quebec heading towards ghettoizing the unvaccinated? Taxing the unvaccinated is a way to do it.
There are better ways of providing consequences to the unvaccinated, such as vaccine mandates.
Too often governments’ answer to a problem is to tax it to death. This isn’t one of them.
We should be checking our chequebooks and our politics at the door when we enter our health care system.