The provincial government’s online vaccine booking system goes live on Monday for eligible people including those over 80.

Late last month, facing mounting criticism, the government said it was delaying the online system until now because it wanted to ensure it didn’t crash once launched. Health Minister Christine Elliott made this comment February 25th.

“We don’t want to rush to failure, we want to make sure this system is ready and not going to crash.”

Fast forward to Wednesday, March 10th, just days before the website launches. Premier Doug Ford contradicts that ‘rush to failure’ comment by his Health Minister.

“Be prepared, every region as the General said, the portal crashes, don’t panic, we’ll get it back up and we have some really great folks on the back end, Amazon, one of the largest companies in the world are supporting us.”

Vaccine task force chair Rick Hillier is urging people to stay off the website if they’re not part of a priority group.