Charlotte County Protesters Demand an End to Vaccine Mandates and COVID-19 Restrictions

The second Charlotte County "Freedom Convoy" support rally took place over the weekend. Over 100 of participants in dozens of vehicles met in Pennfield at noon on Saturday before embarking on a county-wide slow-roll protest against the vaccine mandate and ongoing COVID-19 restrictions.

Although New Brunswick is moving to Level 1, the least restrictive level of its winter plan to manage COVID-19 on Friday, February 18, a move Premier Higgs hoped would take the steam out of protests around the province, all of the protestors we spoke said the move to Level 1 doesn't meet their demands.

The protest took to the streets leaving Pennfield at 12:30 en route to Blacks Harbour followed by a drive through St. George. RCMP were aware of the protest and followed it throughout the day but said no traffic was blocked and that event participants remained peaceful and cooperative. The rally arrived in St. Andrews around 4pm looping around the Pointe before driving through downtown St. Andrews. Although some local businesses closed their doors on Saturday in anticipation of the event, the shop owners they we spoke with who stayed open said there were little to no disruptions to sales and customer traffic due to the protest. New Brunswick Southwest MP John Williamson, who notably voted in favour of ending all COVID-19 mandates, restrictions and lockdowns in Parliament on Monday, watched the convoy support parade from the sidewalk as it travelled down Water Street.

Meanwhile in Fredericton, where protests continue this week, several fines and a few arrests were made over the weekend under the Emergency Measures Act, for blocking or stopping traffic and for disrupting the peace, but the protest in the province's capitol has remained mostly peaceful, according to RCMP.

This all comes at a time when the federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act in response to nation-wide protests, a move Premier Higgs says is unnecessary. At a recent press conference in Fredericton, Premier Higgs also notably said that he anticipates an end to all COVID-19 restrictions and mandates by late March and that ending the vaccine mandate, as a growing list of other provinces has done, isn't off the table from New Brunswick.