Will Canada’s truck drivers force Trudeau to reverse Covid-19 rules?

A convoy of trucks is barrelling towards the Canadian capital, their drivers intending to turn Ottawa into “the world’s largest truck stop”. The so-called “Freedom Convoy” is, according to its organisers, 70km long, though Canadian police put the figure at 20km. Either way, it would be the world’s largest-ever convoy by a great margin, and it is headed squarely for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The truckers’ protest was instigated by a vaccine mandate issued by the Canadian government a fortnight ago, which requires all Canadian truck drivers crossing from the US into Canada to be fully vaccinated or else risk strict quarantine measures. Unvaccinated American drivers will be turned away.

Nearly 90 per cent of Canada’s 120,000 truck drivers are vaccinated, a figure the Canadian government and the country’s trucking association have been at pains to highlight in order to cast the protesters as a radical, fringe minority.

The trouble is, while they are indeed a minority and the composition of their movement is increasingly radical, they are hardly fringe. Many vaccinated truckers are among them, driving in solidarity with their unvaccinated colleagues who are likely to lose their jobs as a result of the mandate. They have been cheered on by thousands of Canadians who, whether out of genuine ideological support or a desire for a bit of fun, have braved temperatures of -20°C to wave Canadian and American flags as the truckers roll by. A poll released on Thursday found that nearly a third of Canadians across the country support the Freedom Convoy’s cause. The same day, Elon Musk, a Canadian citizen and the world’s richest person, tweeted: “Canadian truckers rule.” Never mind the fact that Musk’s company, which seeks to automate trucks, is a bigger long-term threat to truck drivers than vaccine mandates.

It would be a simpler affair for Trudeau to contend with if the demands were simple, and they may have started that way. Earlier this month, Ottawa seemed to give in to the demand by the trucking industry for an exemption to any vaccine mandates concerning border crossings. On January 12, the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) announced that Canadian truck drivers returning from the US would, indeed, be exempt from quarantine. The industry breathed a sigh of relief, as did many business owners; 30,000 trucks cross the border each day, carrying more than $1 billion in trade. Throughout the 20-month-long closure of the border during the pandemic, trucks continued their cross-border business as usual. However, as it turned out, the CBSA, or someone in Trudeau’s administration, got their wires crossed. Less than 24 hours after announcing the exemption, the Canadian government backtracked and reversed its decision. The chaos and confusion that followed provided the spark for the anger that gave rise to the Freedom Convoy. Canada Unity, the group organising the convoy, is no longer asking for a reversal of the vaccine mandate; it wants a reversal of all Canadian Covid-19 restrictions for the entire country.