“Canada’s provinces have generally employed strict Covid-19 measures such as school mask mandates and vaccine passports … [that] have enjoyed broad public support in doing so; even the strictest restrictions are less controversial in Canada than in the US,” Vox says (here).
“Vaccine passports, school mask mandates, and even bans on private indoor gatherings … have been widely used across Canadian provinces,” the Vox writer says. “I’ve been to Canada several times since the beginning of the pandemic …. The differences between the two countries become apparent almost immediately upon crossing the border … in upstate New York, masks are treated as optional at best; once you cross the border, virtually everyone you see indoors is masked up. … My experiences reflect the country’s much stricter government policies.”
Polls show, among other things, that most Canadians support “vaccine passports,” and 70% would support mandatory vaccination of all adults (Canada doesn’t require this). And only 17% of Canadians “strongly support” the trucker protest; nearly two-thirds think they’re “selfish.”
Do these starkly different public attitudes make a difference?
According to Johns Hopkins’ Covidtracker, 23.4% of Americans have been infected and 0.277% of its population have died, while 8.3% of Canadians have been infected and 0.0928% of its population have died, so Canada has about 1/3rd of the infection and death rate of the U.S.
The bottom line is, Canadians don’t like Covid restrictions any more than Americans, but they’re much more accepting of them, because they demonstrably save lives. And the protesting truckers? A tiny fringe group getting little sympathy or support from their countrymen.