I know Nova Scotia and New Brunswick did put some "protesting on highways are super illegal" emergency mandates, but otherwise I don't know if they're removing restrictions.
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick both put in unconstitutional bans on protest and assembly, but their people are ignoring them and protesting regardless. The premiers are claiming to be implementing a plan to very gradually lift restrictions in the coming months, but it seems like a Charlie Brown Football repeat of last spring/summer, where they took their sweet time lifting everything, and then after dragging their feet all summer without lifting anything meaningful, locked right back down for fall/winter.
Notably, however, they seem to be doing the same TWO MORE WEEKS bullshit as always. There seems to be a pattern emerging where they automatically lockdown for fall/winter, spend spring/summer fucking around with phased reopening bullshit, and then right as they are going to let everyone be free again at the end of the phases, UH OH, it's fall and there's some new variant, time to lockdown again. It would be nice if they actually follow through with the phased fuckery, but they have done this more than once before, and I do not know if I can just believe public health technocrats again.
Nova Scotia seems to arguably have had some of the most insidious policies nationwide. Not in the openly dictatorial way like Québec with curfews etc, but the NS leadership (both under Libs and Cons) seems to be big on weird postmodern-authoritarian mind games. I remember reading about how, some time ago:
- The NS premier announced to much fanfare that he was dropping the mask mandates because X% target of Nova Scotians were vaxxed.
- Then he announced the vaxxpass, to be rolled out approximately two weeks after the masks are dropped.
- Then, as the mask freedom day approached, he announced he would be pushing it two weeks later to coincide with the rollout of the vaccine passport, because it was purportedly "unsafe" to have unvaxxed people in public spaced unmasked.
- Then, on the day before the big day, he rugged; vaccine passport is still getting rolled out, but masks are staying too.
That was the big culmination of the months-long phased reopening project: actually everything is exactly the same, i.e. no restrictions lifted, except you get a vaccine passport too. The level of constant lying and rugging makes it seem like a deliberate demoralization campaign. Also dangling the lifting of forced masks as a bit of sugar to help the bitter pill of vaccine passports go down, only to rug at the last possible moment and force both.
If you look at
the actual Nova Scotia reopening plan, they are refusing to even commit to lifting the masks and vaccine passports (opting for ambiguity), so it's not quite a carrot on the end of a stick per usual; maybe a turd.
Comparable bullshit from New Brunswick as well. People have had enough, and I don't see it going over well if they keep trying to play the same gambit over and over again annually.
