Vaccine Mandates for Cross-Border Truckers Have No Upside

V accine mandates for truckers are causing a ruckus north of the border.

As of Saturday, both the U.S. and Canada have mandates in effect that require truck drivers who cross the border to be vaccinated. Hundreds of billions of dollars of trade pass between the U.S. and Canada every year by truck. The vast majority of Canadians live within 100 miles of the U.S. border, and they are especially dependent on the U.S. for fruits and vegetables in winter, given the cold climate. These mandates are hitting Canadian drivers harder than Americans, since Canadian drivers carry about 75 percent of that cross-border trade.

So a convoy of Canadian truckers is driving from Vancouver to Ottawa to protest their government’s mandate. A GoFundMe page has raised $3.2 million to support the protesting truckers. Right-wing commentator Rex Murphy praised them in the National Post, writing that “as the convoy grows it becomes more and more a vicarious protest for people who have never seen the inside of a trucker’s cab. It has the potential to shake things up, to put a brake on the power grabs of our governments.”

Despite having opposed the mandate when it was being proposed and estimating that 10 to 15 percent of Canadian truck drivers are unvaccinated, the Canadian Trucking Alliance put out a statement saying it opposes the trucker convoy because it “does not support and strongly disapproves of any protests on public roadways, highways, and bridges.” The trade group’s president, Stephen Laskowski, said, “This regulation is not changing so, as an industry, we must adapt and comply with this mandate.”

Some Conservative politicians continue their opposition, however. Melissa Lantsman, the shadow transport minister in Parliament, has been sharing a petition to “drop the mandate” and “keep our shelves stocked.” The shadow finance minister, Pierre Poilievre, sees the mandate as a senseless power grab and has called on the government to “reopen our businesses, let our truckers drive & restore freedom for all.” One Conservative MP, Martin Shields, has said he will join the truckers when they arrive in Ottawa. Jason Kenney, the premier of Alberta, has tweeted pictures of empty shelves in grocery stores and said he is working on a joint letter with U.S. governors that they will send to President Biden and Prime Minister Trudeau asking them to end their respective mandates.

Proponents of the mandates, such as Justin Trudeau, point out that most drivers are vaccinated. Trudeau has accused Conservative politicians of “fear-mongering” about supply chains. Transport minister Omar Alghabra told CTV News that this mandate is part of the government’s gradual process of getting everyone vaccinated, since “vaccines are the best way out of the pandemic.” Many Canadians replied to Kenney’s empty-shelves tweet with their own pictures of full shelves in grocery stores.

The opposition to vaccine mandates, though it is loud, is not representative of Canadian public opinion. A recent poll showed that 60 percent of Canadians either strongly support or somewhat support imposing fines on people who remain unvaccinated. Support for fines was stronger among older Canadians, who, like older Americans, are more likely to vote than their younger counterparts. (Ah, the joys of socialized health care.)

Cutting through the hullabaloo, the effects of the vaccine mandates on supply chains will be negative, but probably not too significant. Canadian trucking companies have had varying takes on the mandate’s impact. Vaccine hesitancy is more common in western Canada than in eastern Canada, so Ontario-based carriers, which handle most of the cross-border trade, will likely lose few drivers. One Alberta-based carrier, though, has said it might lose a third of its drivers. And owner-operators who are self-employed will simply be ineligible for cross-border routes, which pay better than routes within Canada.

According to Nate Tabak, a journalist who covers cross-border trucking for FreightWaves, the cost of U.S–Canada trucking was likely to rise regardless of the mandate. He writes that Canadian trucking has been underpriced and that “increasing demand for consumer goods and tight capacity have collided with higher costs and a scarce supply of drivers and equipment.” One carrier executive Tabak talked to said that the market for fresh produce will be most affected by the mandate, because fruits and vegetables can go bad if the waiting time for a truck becomes too long. Another carrier executive said his biggest concern is rising fuel prices.

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Manufacturing Coalition have continued to oppose the vaccine mandate. The Chamber has made a reasonable request of the government: provide some data on why this mandate is necessary. Chamber president Perrin Beatty says the government hasn’t yet done so. When questioned in Parliament on it recently, neither the health minister nor the chief public-health officer was able to provide any data about Covid and truck drivers, either.

That, above all, is the issue here. In the process of making these regulations, nobody on either side of the border was forced to explain why it was worthwhile to add more stress to already-stressed supply chains for no discernable benefit in fighting the pandemic. Unvaccinated Canadian truck drivers are not a meaningful threat to American public health. Unvaccinated American truck drivers are not a meaningful threat to Canadian public health. Yet each country has decided to treat the other’s truck drivers as if they are.

People should get vaccinated because vaccination is the best way to prevent Covid from hospitalizing or killing them. It does not follow from that statement that the government should use its regulatory powers wherever it can to make employment conditional on getting vaccinated. But that seems to be the position that both the American and Canadian governments have taken. The Supreme Court said OSHA couldn’t mandate vaccination for large employers, but it said nothing about border restrictions, so the Biden administration is taking what it can get by keeping its mandate in place for truck drivers crossing the border.

Much like the Covid policies in American universities, these trucking vaccine mandates are not backed by the scientific evidence. Both countries should repeal them. No amount of negative impact on prices or supply chains, however small, is worth implementing a policy that won’t have any effect on Covid’s spread whatsoever.