A COVID Success Story Facing Civil Liberties Lawsuit

"The Come From Away province told Canadians who'd come from away to bloody well stay away."

"Contrary to our constitutionally protected mobility rights, and contrary to Canada's raison d'etre, we unstitched our confederation, in a panic." 

Michael Bryant, executive director, general counsel, Canadian Civil Liberties Association

"When you take a step back and you look at what the four Atlantic provinces are doing differently from the other six, this idea of quarantine after travel, with or without testing, seems to be the big difference."

"Sometimes I think we look at the Atlantic provinces and say, 'Oh, they're so small. What they're doing wouldn't work in Ontario or Quebec'. But there are some very large countries doing the same thing [including Vietnam and South Korea]."

"These aren't monolithic countries where everybody blindly follows the rules. I actually think there would be a lot of support for these kinds of measures, that most people would be willing to put up with quarantine requirements after [interprovincial] travel if they felt it was more likely to keep themselves safe, their communities safe, and ensure they could get their kids back to school."

Dr.Irfan Dhalla, general internist, vice-president, University Health Toronto

Terry McKenna, a Charlottetown businessman welcomes visitors to the province near Borden-Carleton, P.E.I., on July 7, 2020. Photo by Brian McInnis / The Canadian Press

"Typically we think of being a citizen or a resident of a country as meaning you can move freely within that country, and you don't have to have a reason for going to one province or another ... you don't have to check in with anyone, there's no check points or border crossings."

"This departure, where we have provinces kind of policing their borders, is something we're concerned about."

Cara Zwibel, lawyer, Canadian Civil Liberties Association

"We don't take this lightly."

"Do I expect to see outbreaks? Yes I do. How many? I can't predict. How long will they be? I can't predict either."

"But I can tell you that our goal is to minimize the number of outbreaks and minimize the number of people involved."

Dr.Jennifer Russell, chief medical officer of health, New Brunswick

Prince Edward Island has not reported a confirmed case of COVID-19 since April 28. (Brian McInnis/CBC)

Rates of confirmed COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths that have swept across most of Canada have failed to make much of an appearance in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador. Of the 6,871 active cases of COVID-19 identified in Canada on Thursday, the Atlantic Provinces combined had a mere 17. What's more, of the total confirmed 9,158 deaths in all of Canada over the past six months, 70 of those deaths occurred in Atlantic Canada. 

 

Making the east coast of Canada a true and rare anomaly; hugely successful in managing control of the often-deadly virus.

 

The Atlantic Provinces took measures seriously to stem the rising tide of COVID cases and they committed to those measures at an early stage of the pandemic. It helped enormously of course that their geographic location "somewhat off the beaten path, if you will" as put by Dr.Robert Strang, chief medical officer of health for Nova Scotia, offered a modicum of protection in its comparatively sparse population unlike the larger, dense urban populations elsewhere in the country.

 

The tight borders, checkpoints at points of entry, measures limiting the flow of people across Atlantic Canada's own singular borders also helped to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2 causing COVID-19. Their early response to the arrival of the global pandemic saw the four provinces walling themselves in. A Special Measures Order barring anyone but permanent residents, asymptomatic workers or people granted a permit for 'extenuating circumstances' from entering the province was issued by Newfoundland and Labrador's chief medical officer of health in early May. 

In March New Brunswick had prohibited all unnecessary travel into the province; those given permission to enter were obliged to commit to a 14-day self-isolation protocol. Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island adopted similar rules until July when the four provinces gathered as an extended family to create a travel bubble waiving the 14-day quarantine for East Coast residents travelling between the four provinces. There was a downside to the exclusionary bubble -- in trade and tourism -- which were sacrificed to the greater good of protecting the populations of the four provinces.

 

Peggys Cove is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Nova Scotia.  (Tourism Nova Scotia/Matt Long/Landlopers)

Within the past week, British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec were burdened with significant case increases in comparison to the Atlantic Provinces where the issue remains healthily stable. There were no new cases to report in New Brunswick; one case reported in Nova Scotia, while four were reported on Prince Edward Island. In Toronto alone, an increase in COVID-19 cases linked to travel represents close to 18 percent of new cases during the last six weeks as opposed to five percent for the previous six weeks.

"Many of the cases linked to travel reported travelling to other locations in Canada", reported Dr.Vinita Dubey, associate medical officer of health for Toronto. Nova Scotia health officials last month had warned that passengers on two Toronto-to-Halifax flights might have been exposed to COVID-19. "They have, to a large extent, been following the requirements and have been isolating, which to me is an indication that if we didn't have that requirement, they would have, in all likelihood, been much more active and be in situations where they were much more likely to have been transmitting the virus."

"We're not working to have no COVID, but we're working to have limited spread so we can manage it within the existing public health and laboratory testing capacities that we have", noted Nova Scotia's Dr.Strang. "We acted early. There's also been strong uptake from the public around social messaging", said Dr.Susan Kirland, professor, head of the department of community health and epidemiology at Dalhousie University. "There's also been strong uptake from the public around social messaging [the need for distancing, masking, hand-washing, sanitizing]."

A huge success story for the Atlantic Provinces, widely acknowledged and wildly popular with the population of the provinces, hugely supportive of the protective measures enacted by their elected governments. But equally unpopular with civil liberties groups who have expressed their feelings of negativity by filing a Charter challenge with the argument that Atlantic travel measures violate Canadians' constitutional rights to freedom of movement within their country.