Concern about the safety of a potential COVID-19 vaccine and distrust of the regulatory process surfaced in a small section of ethnic media coverage in Canada from May to end-October, amidst otherwise predominantly vaccine-supportive language and straightforward reporting from press briefings by public health officials. This follows from an analysis of 36 vaccine-related ethnic media reports, both news and opinion. With Canada on track to approve the first COVID-19 vaccine in mid-December, the question of how open Canadians will be to inoculation becomes an ever more pressing one, especially in the light of decreasing vaccine confidence visible in recent opinion polls as well as warnings by fact-checking organizations about a potential new wave of mis- and disinformation amplifying the anti-vax message. Of the sample of 36 articles and opinions on the vaccine, few stood out as more contentious in regards to vaccine debate coverage. Some of the contentious issues emerged broadly in the interpretation of polls regarding the willingness of Canadians to take a future vaccine. For example, a Statistics Canada survey released on Aug. 25 showed that 14.1 per cent of Canadians were either somewhat or very unlikely to get a COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available. Concerns about the vaccine’s safety and about potential risks and side-effects were cited as the main reasons. While a number of publications in the analyzed sample limited themselves to reporting survey results—with a comment from the Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, who blamed the lack of vaccine confidence on online misinformation—one interpreted the results as a vote of no-confidence in public health officials and Canada’s regulatory process. The author of an opinion piece entitled “Vaccination: who should we believe?” questioned the value of Tam’s assurances about the safety and effectiveness of a future vaccine by pointing out her changing stance on mask-wearing as a tool of COVID-19 spread prevention. He also argued that it was Tam’s inconsistency which was to blame for a lack of vaccine confidence in the population, rather than falsehoods about the vaccine shared on social media. The author maintained a distanced, ironic tone throughout the article, referring to a potential vaccine as “miraculous.” According to Claire Wardle of First Draft, a non-profit fighting mis- and disinformation, during the pandemic, the narrative focus in vaccine opposition movements has shifted from science towards personal freedom, she told the Daily Beast in early November. A possible reflection of that shift could be glimpsed in a record of a street survey conducted by one of the ethnic media outlets in early September. Out of 11 participants (eight men and three women) who were asked if they would take the COVID-19 vaccine, nine said no. Explaining their reasons, three participants cited conspiracy theories (connecting the pandemic to Bill Gates, calling it a scam, or an experiment). Some cited negative experiences with flu shots or lack of faith in the effectiveness of vaccines overall, and some replied that mandatory vaccination was a violation of personal freedom. In what appeared to be endorsement of a vaccine-hesitant discourse, the interviewer asked a number of leading questions reflecting his own distrust of the official messaging and opposition to mandatory inoculation (“We don’t really know if it will be effective against all viruses, since this virus mutates, right?”; “So we can’t really say this is the kind of pandemic we’ve seen in the movies?”; while interviewing someone who said that “a lot of people won’t want to get a vaccine because it’s simply about controlling people,” the interviewer added, “especially mandatory vaccines”). A survey that both ethnic and mainstream media took note of was a poll by Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies measuring Canadians’ attitudes to mandatory vaccination. The survey, published on Oct. 14, found that the share of the population in favour of mandatory COVID-19 vaccination shrank to 39 per cent from 57 per cent in July, while the share of people in favour of voluntary vaccination rose to 54 per cent. The Toronto Star syndicated report was headlined “Fewer Canadians support mandatory vaccination, poll finds,” but the framing of the findings in the ethnic media varied.