New Brunswick — There has been a great deal of controversy with the province’s recently announced policy that all travellers must quarantine for at least a week in a designated hotel at their own expense before entering.
The province has argued that the plan is to ensure that those traveling to New Brunswick are as “commensurately broke” as the rest of the province.
Some have argued that any policy involving a steep economic penalty unfairly impacts those in lower income brackets, but the Higgs government has argued that this is not the case.
“It’ll cost those entering the province about $1,300 in expenses,” said the premier. “But rest assured, this is just a baseline. We’ll be making economic assessments of each traveller, and will find other ways to levy steeper fines on the more well-to-do.”
The government explained that this policy was born from a romantic notion stemming from the province’s “gilded age,” which Higgs places around the time he was a teenager in the 1940s.
“This province was built by strong figures who came here with nothing, and built entire industries,” he said. “Just like my hero, James K. Irving. His father’s father’s father came here with, well, admittedly a good deal of investment capital. But they made a lot more with it!
“Franky, I don’t think that’s too much to ask from a heavily debited fine arts major during an economic crisis.”