The tide is turning on Covid-19 restrictions.
An Angus-Reid poll released on Jan. 31 revealed that 54 per cent of Canadians surveyed want all pandemic restrictions to end and for people to be empowered to manage their own level of risk.
That’s a rather dramatic 15 per cent increase in just a month, when just 39 per cent of Canadians previously felt that way.
The backlash against public health orders was in full view outside of Yellowknife City Hall on Saturday when close to 100 protesters gathered to chant, plant signs and wave flags.
The president of the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce recently spoke up to relate how much damage businesses have sustained due to Covid restrictions over the past couple of years. Foot traffic through their doors has fallen off precipitously. Major barriers have deterred travellers from coming to the territory. Business owners, if they had the ability in the first place, have already reinvented themselves and have nowhere left to turn, according to chamber leader Rob Warburton.
“The GNWT appears to keep waiting for the perfect time to reopen to leisure travel, only to hit yet another reason to delay it. As this current outbreak subsides, many in the Yellowknife business community simply cannot survive any further waiting and indecision,” he writes.
In Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba, the provincial governments have announced the easing of restrictions as they move toward a “reopening” stage.
In British Columbia, Dr. Bonnie Henry, who used to advocate for lockdowns, is now espousing “self-management,” allowing residents to find comfort with their own exposure to risk while continuing to take extra precautions for the most vulnerable, namely the elderly and those with compromised immune systems.
Outside of that, “we can and must continue going to work, going to school, and socializing safety in our small groups … we’re preparing for how we live with this when we no longer have those restrictions that we have in place now,” Henry said.
In Europe, the World Health Organization’s director for that continent foresees a “plausible endgame” to the pandemic for Europeans as the worst appears to be behind them, he said Thursday.
The highly-contagious Omicron variant isn’t to be trifled with, but it’s milder than its Delta predecessor and, proportionately, fewer people are winding up hospitalized or dead. That’s also partly because of the high rates of vaccinations — close to 90 per cent among those ages 12 and up in the NWT have received the jabs.
What’s more, as Warburton noted, we have been equipped with at-home tests to know when we’re infected and when we should be self-isolating. There are also government-approved anti-viral drugs becoming available to fight Covid-19.
NWT Health Minister Julie Green stated last week that the territorial government was considering allowing leisure travellers to return last December but then pulled back due to sweeping Omicron variant outbreaks. That was understandable at the time, but now we’ve gained a much better understanding of the enemy, and the enemy can be tamed.
Green has signalled that the NWT’s public health emergency will end in spring. She was coy in regards to welcoming out-of-territory visitors before then.
“We’ll be considering when it’s appropriate to open our borders to leisure travellers,” she said.
All Green has to do is look at the examples being set by a growing number of other jurisdictions and the unnecessary harm continuing to be done by suffocating restrictions — businesses buckling and almost all events being cancelled — and her period of “consideration” should be mighty short.