May 13, 2022 – Quebec, Canada
Finally, the mask mandate in Quebec is at an end – almost.
At midnight tonight, Quebec becomes the last province in Canada to lift the mandatory wearing of face masks in public. However, it isn’t as cut and dry as it may seem. There are still restrictions that may be with the populous for some time to come.
Citizens will still have to wear the face mask while travelling on public transport and visiting health care facilities such as clinics and hospitals. However, school bus passengers will no longer be obliged to wear a mask, on grounds that they have spent the entire day together. Quebec’s citizens can attend sporting events – without a mask, until they take the metro home.
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Quebec’s mandatory mask mandate has been in place for a whopping twenty-one consecutive months, since being instilled upon the public in July 2020. At least another month will pass before passengers of the STM will be able to ditch the mask – which is slated to take place on June 18th.
Premier Francois Legault is adamant that Quebec’s efforts have paid off – still hasn;t offered a reason for the two curfews, however.
“What this says is that the measures that we put in place over the past two years have had results,” said Legault. “Of course, one death is one death too many, but thanks to the measures, thanks to masks, thanks to all the efforts we made on vaccination, we find that Quebec has had fewer deaths than the rest of Canada, than the United States, than the rest of the world.”
The only province to put its population under curfew – twice, is the last to lift the face mask restraints on its populous.
Legault introduced the 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew on Dec. 31st, just in time to ban people from the streets on New Year’s Eve. He had imposed a curfew earlier in 2021 for almost five months, between January and May. Quebec is the only province to prohibit its citizens from leaving their homes at night as a way to control COVID-19 transmission.
Premier Legault has been reluctant to provide scientific evidence as to why a curfew was required.
