As Quebec proposes legislation banning COVID related protests in front of schools, daycares, health-care facilities, and vaccine clinics, B.C. could do the same.

The province is working on potentially creating bubble zones around schools and hospitals that would keep anti-vaccine protestors away after a series of protests at hospitals, including in Kamloops, and at schools in Salmon Arm.

“I think all British Columbians are perplexed that people who have a different point of view – a minority view – would choose to disrupt children in education settings or patients in healthcare settings to get their point across,” Premier John Horgan said Thursday. “I am hopeful that we have seen the last of that type of behaviour.”

Still, Horgan says Attorney General, David Eby, and the Solicitor General, Mike Farnworth, are working on legislation or perhaps policy changes to ensure that these protests do not happen again.

“It is something that we don’t do lightly, but we do in the interest of the vast majority of British Columbians who want to know that they can go about their business free from intolerance from a select few,” Horgan said.

His comments come on the day Quebec Premier François Legault tabled legislation that would ban COVID related protests within 50 metres of schools, daycares, health-care facilities, vaccine clinics, and testing centres.

“It doesn’t make sense to have anti-vaccine protests in front of places that are for our children or our patients,” Legault said during question period on Wednesday.

Legault says there are limits to the right to protest, and if passed, the legislation he proposed could fine people who violate the ban between $1,000 and $6,000. Those fines would be doubled if protestors threaten or intimidate people trying to enter or leave one of the sites.

Quebec’s law is set to expire when that province’s health emergency order, which has been in place since March 2020, is lifted.

Earlier this month, Health Minister Adrian Dix told NL News that the idea of protest bubble zones around hospitals has some merit.

“People do have the right to protest in this country but that right comes with responsibility.,” Dix said, on the NL Morning News, referencing bubble zones created around women’s health clinics that provided abortion services in the early 1990s.

“With respect to women’s health…that came after a series of harassing demonstration and then a law was passed, and it takes awhile to pass a law. But those are issues absolutely to look at.”

While on the campaign trail this month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau too said he would make it a crime to block access to hospitals and other health care facilities.

– With files from The Canadian Press