Health card renewals

Did your health card and driver’s licence expire during the pandemic? Mine too. As you know, for a while the Ontario government let us use expired cards; they didn’t want us to risk catching Covid in those crowded Service Ontario offices. All well and good. But then in September, Service Ontario announced that the grace period for using expired cards was ending on February 28, 2022, so we all have to renew our expired cards. The pandemic is still on. What are our renewal options? That’s where things get squirrelly.

According to the Service Ontario website, everyone aged 15 ½ and over must go to a Service Ontario office and renew in person. Everyone? Well, not exactly. If you just want to renew your driver’s licence, for now you can do that online. If you just want to renew your health card, you have to renew in person. If you want to renew both your health card and your driver’s licence, you can do that online. Everyone? Well, not exactly. Everyone in Ontario can renew their health card and driver’s licence together online, except for one group: people aged 75 to 80.

Yup, Service Ontario is forcing a whole cohort of vulnerable seniors to go into a busy, crowded indoor space and take our masks off for the photo. That’s contrary to Public Health Ontario’s rules, which require us to wear masks in indoor public spaces. So what extra measures is Service Ontario applying to protect us? Well, none at all. You don’t need to show proof of vaccination to go there. They just ask you to fill out a Covid questionnaire at home and bring it along. Your name’s not even on it. When I went in a few weeks ago, nobody bothered to ask me for it.

Why are they singling out seniors aged 75 to 80? Service Ontario doesn’t say. Once you turn 80 you can renew your health card by mail, so maybe they figured this was their last chance to get our pictures. In that case, they are endangering our health for bureaucratic convenience. Or maybe they’re thinking that if we catch Covid, we will save them the trouble of finding long term care beds for us down the road. A handy little boomer remover, courtesy of the Government of Ontario.