Privacy concerns are being raised after an Asian grocery store in Richmond posted its staff members’ vaccination rates at the entrance.
Debates are already raging across Canada whether or not to introduce COVID-19 vaccine passports for many aspects of daily life after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signalled they are “to be expected” for travel in the coming months.
Last week, Ian Young, of the South China Morning Post, shared a photo on his showing the T&T supermarket in Yaohan Centre setting up a board at the store entrance with words saying the staff vaccination rate of this store is 87 per cent.
This post raised questions with some people on the Twitter thread, including concerns over a possible violation of the Privacy Act.
According to Paul Wong, marketing manager at T&T, the company “values transparency all throughout the pandemic,” such as being the only Asian grocer being transparent about their COVID-19 cases.
This time, said Wong, they decided to extend their “transparency commitment” even further to include store staff vaccination rates.
However, Wong also noted that getting vaccinated or not is a very personal decision, which is not mandatory for store employees.
Wong didn’t answer the question of whether or not employees offer their vaccination records voluntarily.
“Individual vaccination status is not published to protect employee privacy,” added Wong.
"In addition, 83 per cent of T&T are vaccinated with their first dose, and they volunteer this information to make customers be their own judge for what makes them feel safe, said Tina Lee, CEO of T&T supermarkets.
“I would hope that it also makes customers feel more safe when shopping with us, but who’s to say 83 per cent is enough? Some customers might want to see 95 per cent before they come back to shop in store, while other customers might not care at all,” added Lee.
The Richmond News reached out to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for B.C. for comments regarding privacy violations, but said it couldn’t comment on specific cases.