Two Solitudes or All in the Same Boat? Citizens’ Levels of Compliance with COVID-19 Preventive Measures in Quebec and the Rest of Canada

Abstract

In Canada, the province of Quebec has been disproportionally affected by COVID-19 both in terms of cases and deaths. Why is that so? Some have speculated that Quebecers are less disciplined and less likely to comply with public health preventive measures. However, there has been no systematic empirical test of this hypothesis. In this paper, we use the Imperial College London and YouGov dataset that includes 12,280 observations from Canadians surveyed across seven months (April to October 2020) to test whether Quebecers comply less with preventive measures than other Canadians. Our results show that the differences between Quebec and the rest of Canada are few. Moreover, when there is a gap, the differences are modest. That is, there is no systematic nor substantial difference between Quebec and the rest of Canada in terms of citizens’ level of compliance with preventive measures. These findings have important implications. While it is crucial that we understand why Quebec has been hit so hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, it should be clear that this is not due to different levels of compliance with preventive measures in Quebec.