While answering a reporter's question Tuesday, [Alberta Premier Jason] Kenney said the debate around immunizations and COVID-19 mandates is causing deep divisions among Albertans.

Unvaccinated people are being treated like they are "somehow unclean," he said.

"Everybody should avail themselves of the protection of safe and effective vaccines, and that the choice not to get vaccinated is not just a personal choice — it does have social consequences.

"But it's never OK to treat people like that, to stigmatize people in that way. In a way, it kind of reminds me of the attitudes that circulated in North America in the mid-1980s about people with HIV/AIDS — that there's this notion that they had to be kind of distanced, for health reasons."

[Critics of] the comments pointed to Kenney's role in attempting to overturn a law extending hospital visitation rights to gay couples during the 1980s AIDS epidemic in San Francisco.