Unvaccinated Canadians can now be barred from grocery stores in accordance with a new set of pandemic measures unveiled by the government of one Canadian Province.
New Brunswick, one of Canada’s easternmost island Provinces, deployed its Winter Action Plan (WAP) on Dec. 3 in response to a marginal rise in Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases.
The WAP is composed of three tiers of alert levels with increasingly stringent social distancing, masking requirements, and business lockdowns, according to the Provincial Government’s website.
The Plan comes into effect at 11:59 p.m. on Dec. 4 and will place all regions in the province in the first alert level. The government’s website is vaguely worded, stating only that a requirement of “physical distancing in spaces that do not require proof of vaccination, such as retail stores, malls, salons and spas” is in play.
But the website adds, “If these locations require proof of vaccination for all patrons, distancing is not necessary.”
The rules, however, contain an oblique public health exception that states “salons and spas will not require distancing between the patron and the service provider.”
New Brunswick, like the rest of Canada, has a vaccine passport mandate in place for businesses such as restaurants and bars, gyms, and entertainment centers.
However, under a section on the website titled “business/retail,” Level 1 restrictions are defined as, “Open with physical distancing of 2 metres, or can require proof of full vaccination 12 and older.”
Under Level 2, a 50 percent fire code capacity reduction is added to the measures, while under Level 3, all non-essential businesses will be forced to close.
The Government of New Brunswick’s WAP website does not specifically note the provision allowing grocery stores to require health papers by name. However, Dec. 3 reporting by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canada’s federally-funded state messaging outlet, specifically stated that “Malls, grocery stores, [and] salons must enforce physical distancing or may instead require proof of vaccination from all patrons.”
Under prior measures, including vaccine passports, essential businesses such as grocery stores have not been permitted to deny access to those who cannot or will not show their health status paperwork to security guards.
Under the WAP, New Brunswick grocery stores will now be permitted to banish those who cannot scan the federal Commons Project Framework-based QR code vaccine passport or the provincial equivalent in order to avoid requiring social distancing.
All Canadians should take note. When vaccine passports were originally…
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