This weekend, opponents of the health pass also made their voices heard in Quebec. “Freedom”, “we are not laboratory rats”: a few thousand people demonstrated on Saturday in the streets of Montreal to protest against the establishment of a vaccine passport. Quebecers who want to eat in a restaurant, go out to a bar, go to a gym or attend a festival must present proof of vaccination as of September 1.
Many people came with their families to parade peacefully under the scorching sun in downtown Montreal. In the crowd, posters denouncing the “dictatorship”, “the vaccine scam”, the “health apartheid” amid many Quebec flags. Several women have posters “My body, my choice” deflecting the emblematic slogan of the feminist movements after May 1968 and then “pro-choice”, the activists of abortion rights in the United States.
“It should be everyone’s freedom to get vaccinated. There, with her passport, she is a way of imposing ourselves ”, explains Véronique Whalen, 31, who came with her family. “It is for my children that I am here, I am afraid for them. It is discrimination, ”she adds, adding that she is not used to demonstrations.
“I want to have the option, it is an experimental vaccine, one does not have the right to impose on me”, Jacques is irritated, who above all does not want to give his last name because “when one is against thought, they are only the objective for us.” they lie, don’t listen to them ”, shouts a man through his megaphone. Some protesters also wear yellow stars with the words” not vaccinated “on their chests. A diversion and a reference to the Shoah was also seen in the demonstrations in France that sparked a wave of outrage.
In the French-speaking province of Canada, vaccination coverage is very high as around 84% of Quebecers have received a first dose of vaccine and 70% are fully vaccinated.