At a press conference on Thursday, Quebec Premier François Legault outlined the next steps his government would take for the "health contribution" tax on unvaccinated people and clarified his own position on the issue.

"The intention isn't to hurt people who are going through a hard time," explained the premier. "I'm talking about the homeless, people who have illnesses that exempt them from being vaccinated, even people who have certain mental health issues [...] what we envision is to say to people who choose not to get vaccinated that there's a price to pay."

Premier François Legault announced at a Thursday press conference that Quebec's vaccine passport system will soon apply to big stores, excluding pharmacies and food stores.

Quebecers will soon need to prove they've received at least two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine to get into stores that cover an area at least 1,500 m² in size, such as Canadian Tire.

Premier François Legault has officially confirmed that Quebec's province-wide curfew will be lifted on Monday — which means no more scrambling to get home on time while risking fines.

At a press conference on Thursday, Legault said, "The reason we did this was to stop the exponential growth of the number of infections and then the number of hospitalizations. So given that we seem to have reached a peak, that permits us to remove the curfew."