Alberta health minister apologizes for QR code issues, possible data breaches

Problems with Alberta’s updated QR code There were a few hiccups with the update to Alberta’s QR code to meet federal travel requirements on Wednesday.

Edmonton — The province assures Albertans that issues with an update to the province's proof of vaccination QR code are being worked on after a dozen data breaches were reported to Alberta Health.

“I do want to apologize to Albertans who may have experienced some issues when accessing the updated vaccine record for travel,” Health Minister Jason Copping said in the legislature Thursday. “I want to assure the House that department officials are urgently looking into it.”

“They’ve notified the Office of the Privacy Commissioner that there may have been some breaches.”

Alberta Health announced Thursday evening that there were 12 reports from Albertans that they received the wrong vaccine record when they entered their information on the province's website.

"The website was shut down immediately following these reports," press secretary Steve Buick wrote in a statement.

"An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the technical problem and the number of Albertans affected. It does not appear to be caused by a security breach to the system."

The province had originally announced that a new QR code, which meets the federal travel requirements, would be released Wednesday.

But many people experienced an error when trying to access the new record, and eventually, a message was posted to the government’s website stating the new record would be unavailable while the issues were worked out.

Albertans were still able to access the previous version of the QR code.

Buick said the original version still works at businesses and other provinces can now scan that code too.

The health minister did not specify exactly when the new record would be available, but said it would be ready by the federal deadline on Nov. 30.