The last truck blocking the southbound lane moves after a breakthrough to resolve the impasse at a protest blockade at the United States border in Coutts, Alta., on Feb. 2, 2022.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer urged residents to keep trying to contain COVID-19 in order to protect communities and the strained health care system, as protests against pandemic restrictions spread and the provincial government weighed whether to end the health measures immediately.
A handful of United Conservative Party caucus members are pushing Premier Jason Kenney to drop public-health restrictions, in part because of a protest that blocked access to the U.S-Canada border near Coutts, Alta. That protest started Saturday. On Wednesday, the group cleared one lane of traffic in each direction. By Thursday, commercial and passenger vehicles could go through the border, RCMP said.
But the protest at Coutts continues. A secondary group has assembled north of the original site, and protesters drove convoys of vehicles and farm equipment on Alberta’s major highways Thursday.
Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer, would not say on Thursday whether she believed ending the province’s vaccine certificate program, as the provincial government has said it intends to do in the near future, is a good idea.
“I have provided my recommendations to elected officials and the recommendations are under cabinet confidence,” she told reporters. “They’re aware of the recommendations that I provided based on current states and my perspective, and they have always taken my recommendations into consideration. However, that’s not the only factor in the decisions that they make.”
While the impasse at Coutts has eased, the situation remains tenuous. Some of the protesters agreed to allow traffic to flow because they believed the government would then lift all COVID-19 restrictions. When that did not happen, disgruntled farmers, truckers and residents gathered opposite a police barricade 14 kilometres north of the original protest.
At the secondary standoff, a row of semi trucks idled just metres away from police vehicles strung across the northbound and southbound lanes. Protesters had a fire burning in a barrel to keep themselves warm Thursday morning.
About 200 vehicles had gathered at the secondary site by Thursday afternoon, according to RCMP. The protestors are letting vehicles through, RCMP said.
Frustrated protesters are taking to the road elsewhere in Alberta. Semis and passenger vehicles made their way southbound on Highway 2 on Thursday afternoon. A small protest convoy rolled on Highway 3, between Lethbridge and Fort Macleod. Another cluster of protesters’ vehicles, led by tractors, made its way south on Calgary’s Deerfoot Trail.
United Conservative caucus chair Nathan Neudorf issued a statement on Wednesday denying reports that the caucus had negotiated an agreement with protesters at Coutts to temporarily end the province’s vaccine certificate program, called the Restrictions Exemption Program (REP).
While Mr. Neudorf said no such agreement had been authorized, he added that, “as the premier has stated, Alberta will begin lifting restrictions very soon, likely within days, starting with the REP.”
Mr. Kenney, earlier this week, said COVID-19 mandates could be gone by the end of February. Last week, he said he was “confident” they would be lifted by the end of March, assuming hospital admissions were trending downward.
In Saskatchewan, Premier Scott Moe said this week that his province will be taking steps “in the coming days and weeks” to end restrictions and manage COVID-19 as it does other communicable diseases and seasonal viruses.
“I’m concerned that COVID being the constant topic of conversation and dictating our daily lives will have a negative long-term impact on each of us in this province,” he said in a video posted to social media on Wednesday.
“Calls for daily government intrusion into people’s lives, skepticism regarding anything remotely positive related to COVID, this perpetual state of crisis is having a harmful impact on everyone.”
Mr. Moe said people understand what they need to do to stay safe “and they’re prepared to live with that risk more than they’re prepared to live with the ongoing government intrusion into their lives.”
British Columbia in January extended its vaccine certificate program to June 30. Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry has said it could be ended sooner if the province is “in a better place” before then. She reiterated this week that restrictions will still be needed for the foreseeable future.
“I think I made it quite clear that we’re still ratcheting up the dial, versus on and off switches,” Dr. Henry said Tuesday.
Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health Kieran Moore said Thursday that public-health measures need to be reexamined after this wave of infections subsides, taking into account both the transmissibility of Omicron and the availability of vaccines and antiviral treatments. He has previously said Ontarians will have to learn to live with the virus.
“I think it’s a discussion we have to have at a societal level, of what our values are,” Dr. Moore told reporters. “ … We have to decide as a society how many public health measures we want to just recommend and/or maintain in a legal fashion.”
With a report from Jeff Gray in Ontario
We have a weekly Western Canada newsletter written by our B.C. and Alberta bureau chiefs, providing a comprehensive package of the news you need to know about the region and its place in the issues facing Canada. Sign up today.