New Brunswick may consider making COVID-19 vaccines mandatory down the road, says Premier Blaine Higgs.
The topic, however, received “very limited discussion” during the premiers’ call with Trudeau, according to Higgs.
“There are varying views across the country,” he said, while noting that before the pandemic his province had previously proposed legislation to make vaccinations mandatory for children in schools and daycares unless they have a medical exemption.
“I voted for [a] mandatory vaccine policy,” he said. “It didn’t pass.”
Higgs said some people will consider getting the COVID-19 vaccines only when it affects them “personally.”
“We’ve seen it: whether your kids’ on the sports team, and you want to go to the kids’ game, or in Quebec, … you want to go to liquor store, you have to be vaccinated. When it affects people personally, then it seems to become readily an option,” he said.
He said he agreed with a comment from the CBC host that Canadians’ patience is “wearing thin” on the unvaccinated, saying the vaccinated don’t see why they have to continue enduring restrictions when they have “gone the extra mile” to get vaccinated.
“So it is becoming more and more of an issue, and I would just like to think that we can manage and get over the 90 percent [vaccination rate] and maintain that with boosters and all and it’ll kind of be okay,” he said.
“But it is a dialogue that we likely will have again.”
Higgs, who tested positive for COVID-19 in late December with a rapid test, told reporters in a video briefing in Fredericton on Dec. 31, 2021, that because he was “double vaccinated” and had a booster vaccine, his symptoms will remain “mild.”
“If we continually have outbreaks of the 10 percent that refuse to be vaccinated, then we have to go to the next level,” he said.
Not all premiers echoed Higgs’s sentiment.
While still encouraging people to get vaccinated, Kenney said it is a personal choice.
“Alberta’s legislature removed the power of mandatory vaccination from the Public Health Act last year and will not revisit that decision, period,” he wrote on Twitter on Jan. 7.
Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe took a similar stand as Kenny.
“While we strongly encourage everyone to get vaccinated to protect yourself and others from serious illness, in Saskatchewan this is a personal choice, not one imposed on you by the government,'' Moe wrote in a statement the same day.