Omar Alghabra, the transport minister, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Friday that there had been no meaningful decline in cross-border truck traffic since either country’s vaccine mandate was put in place. In any case, doing so would have no practical effect: The United States made vaccines mandatory for Canadian truckers crossing its border as of Jan. Trudeau has made it clear that the protest will not lead his government to reverse the vaccine mandate. “But I don’t really think it is actually having a major impact on supermarkets in Canada.”

“There’s definitely amplification and fear-mongering going on by the people who are not happy about this rule,” he said. On Saturday, that group issued a statement indicating that the protesters did not represent the views of most truckers.īut David Soberman, a professor who studies logistics at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, said that empty shelves in Canadian shops were mostly linked to other factors, like a global shortage of shipping containers, disruptions in the production of some products and a lack of employees to replenish shelves because of Covid infections. Trudeau has called the protesters a “small fringe minority.” He has repeatedly said that 90 percent of Canada’s truckers are vaccinated, an assessment shared by the Canadian Trucking Alliance, a trade group that opposes the protest. Several people in the crowd on Saturday said they believed vaccines were potentially harmful and ineffective, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. More than 77 percent of Canadians are fully vaccinated. “The vast majority of the people that have either come on board to participate in the truck convoy or those donating to support it financially have just reached a point of frustration and exasperation with these lockdowns and continuation of restrictions that they want someone to speak up and say ‘enough’ to the federal government.”īut opinion polls have consistently shown strong support in Canada for public health measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus, which have mostly been imposed by provincial governments, many of them led by Conservatives. Hill, a former Conservative member of Parliament who lives in Alberta. “This thing has really taken on a life of its own,” said Mr. Such calls for violence have been denounced by the convoy’s organizers, as well as by many of the protesters on the streets. Some people, who may not have been involved with the convoy itself, called for an attack on Parliament similar to the Jan. But it recent days, it has broadened to include Canadians critical of pandemic restrictions in general, and of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The convoy was organized in response to a regulation, implemented this month, that requires truckers returning from the United States to show proof of vaccination. The convoy ebbed and flowed in size on the way to Ottawa, the capital, where the police were bracing for what they said would be an unpredictable weekend of protests.

OTTAWA - Thousands of protesters gathered in front of Canada’s Parliament on Saturday in a raucous demonstration, which began as a movement by truckers to challenge a government vaccination mandate but spread to include a wide array of antigovernment grievances.Ī loosely organized “Freedom Convoy” of trucks set out last weekend from the western province of British Columbia.

Colorado truckers strike 2021