Last Friday afternoon, Premier Blaine Higgs and Chief Medical Officer of Health Jennifer Russell announced new restrictions for people crossing borders in and out of New Brunswick that will have serious effects on Tantramar area residents and workers.
Memramcook Tantramar MLA Megan Mitton heard from hundreds of people over the weekend, with questions and concerns about the new restrictions.
CHMA spoke to Megan Mitton on Sunday. Here’s that interview, as aired on Tantramar Report:
Under modified self-isolation guidelines, regular cross-border commuters and truck drivers, “must stay at home at all times, except for medical needs or to pick up necessities of life, as long as they can do so while avoiding contact with others by using curbside pickup or delivery,” according to a government release.
While other members of their household are not required to join this isolation regimen, commuters are being told they should, “stay away from other members of their household as much as possible,” and that members of their household should minimize contact with others.
The restrictions apply regardless of vaccination status.
“These are some of the most significant restrictions that have come in, I would say, since last spring,” says Mitton, calling this a “new chapter” in the pandemic. “I’ve received hundreds of messages, and I’m working to get answers for people and to respond as quickly as I can.”
Mitton questions the timing of the announced changes, on a Friday afternoon. “I would argue that’s the worst time to announce things like this,” says Mitton, “because there are gaps in the communication. And it has left a lot of people very confused and stressed.”
This Sunday May 2, for the third week in a row, protesters are planning to gather at the border to call for an end or easing of restrictions. About 35 people gathered on each side of the border back on April 18, and this past Sunday some protesters blocked traffic headed into Nova Scotia.
Beth Scammell lives in Aulac and works in health care in Nova Scotia. For months, Scammell has been permitted to cross the border for work, but has been limited from doing anything else in Nova Scotia, including visiting her partner who lives down the street from her workplace. As a single mother with no family in New Brunswick, Scammell says her mental health has already been suffering. In fact, back in February Scammell started a petition calling for the border restrictions between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to be lifted.
The latest border restrictions from New Brunswick require Scammell to isolate when she returns home each day in New Brunswick, meaning she can’t see people or do errands in either province.
“The government thinks it is ok to basically put me under house arrest,” says Scammell, “for doing an essential job in an area with no COVID cases, following all travel and PPE protocols, being COVID swabbed every week, and being fully vaccinated. That’s not ok.”
Scammell says she is looking at options for working from home or taking a leave due to stress, though she hates the idea of leaving patient care.
Alyssa Greene has also considered taking leave under the new restrictions, and also uses the phrase “house arrest” to describe her new state of affairs as a cross-border commuter. Greene works for Canada Post in Nova Scotia, and points out the irony of her situation under the new rules.
“I’m still allowed to interact with 720 households and businesses in Nova Scotia, but I can’t go buy milk or gas on either side,“ says Greene.
Joanna Perkin is another cross-border commuter who’s been living and working under restrictions for months. She gets tested weekly for COVID-19, doesn’t leave her workplace for breaks, and has been voluntarily limiting her contacts and interactions in Sackville. These new regulations are “becoming much, much more extreme,” she says.
Perkin says she could understand better if she was being asked to make adjustments like further limiting her contacts by say, reducing the Steady 15 rule to a Steady 5.
“If they had asked us to make sure you’re only going to the grocery store once a week… If they put in restrictions like that, and suggestions like that, I would be all for that,” says Perkin, “Because I do understand the reality of, you know, of how this can possibly go, and how I know it’s going up north. But to say you can’t leave your house for a month… It’s inhumane.”
Mitton says she’s mostly heard from cross-border workers for whom the rules just seem unreasonable. “They’re crossing the border, they’re getting tested weekly. They’re health care workers, a lot of them. They’re trying really hard to take care of people, keep them safe in the pandemic. And they’re saying, this is feeling impossible for us.”
Mitton says questions still abound, such as how people will vote in the upcoming municipal elections. (Mail in ballots are available by request through Elections NB.) Local Sackville town council candidate Ken Hicks is a cross-border commuter whose campaign will now have to be fully online. Though Hicks wasn’t planning on door-to-door canvassing because of existing pandemic concerns, he says people in Sackville have, “an expectation of meeting with me face to face,” which he is hoping he can satisfy by meeting via social media, email and other online methods.
The Sackville Fire Department will not be significantly affected. There are about six volunteer firefighters in the department who are affected by the new rules, says Chief Craig Bowser. Luckily, the fire marshall says they will be able to respond to fire calls, though they won’t be able to attend training sessions, and will have to wear masks at all times.
Mitton says that she has asked but not received numbers from the New Brunswick government indicating the number of cases that been entering the province at the Nova Scotia border. CHMA has also requested these numbers.
“My sense is that a lot of these rules have been sort of blanket restrictions,” says Mitton. “That they’re trying to capture people coming in from airports, people coming in Quebec and Maine. And yes, right now there’s an outbreak in Halifax. We’ve seen that before where Halifax was contained. And that’s what needs to happen. The geographic area needs to be targeted, like what’s happening in Edmundston.”
Mitton says she’s even advocated for consideration of a Tantramar-Cumberland bubble to accommodate the situation of these cross-border communities. “It’s a very unique situation,” says Mitton, “especially for those people that aren’t traveling very far.”
Mitton encourages anyone with questions and concerns to call her, but also to be patient as various government departments catch up with the new public health restrictions. She says she’s currently advocating for better design of the rules as they apply to maritime borders.
“It’s hard because we’re still in a pandemic,” says Mitton. “We need to take the variants of concern seriously. We need to have strong public health measures. We also need to have the rules make sense for the people who live near this border. And unfortunately, we’ve seen that hasn’t been the case many times over the past year.”
