People have the right to protest, but even righteous causes should not snarl cross-border trade.
People have the right to protest, but even righteous causes should not snarl cross-border trade.
T he cross-border trucker vaccine mandates from the U.S. and Canadian governments are bad policy. They are totally unnecessary to prevent Covid spread, and neither government has provided meaningful evidence to the contrary. These policies were imposed without regard for supply chains, truck drivers, or factories on either side of the border. Their only result is to sow political division.
I’ve been against the cross-border trucker vaccine mandates since November, well before they picked up significant attention in the mainstream press. I wrote against them again on January 14, after the Supreme Court’s ruling on the OSHA mandate. I wrote against them yet again on January 25, before the truckers reached Ottawa. I’m still against them now. Insofar as the “Freedom Convoy” protests have been in opposition to the vaccine mandates, their cause is just.
According to a post from Rupa Subramanya on Bari Weiss’s Substack, many of the protesters are demonstrating against more than the vaccine mandate. They feel generally unheard and taken for granted by their government. They want all pandemic restrictions lifted. That’s all fine. They have a right to protest.
They don’t have a right to block roads.
When leftist environmentalist groups sit in rush-hour traffic to protest climate change, conservatives are quick to point out that they are being counterproductive and making life worse for people who have nothing to do with what they’re protesting against. When Black Lives Matter protesters link arms and block freeways, conservatives want police to remove them. In both cases, conservatives are correct, and the protesters are wrong to block traffic.
The current situation is no different. If anything, it’s worse. At least police can arrest a dozen hippies sitting in the street for a few hours. We’re now on day five of people using trucks to block the Ambassador Bridge.
Because of geography, trucking between southern Ontario and the U.S. is difficult enough. There are two border crossings between Ontario and Michigan that allow commercial trucks: the Ambassador Bridge (between Detroit and Windsor) and the Blue Water Bridge (between Port Huron and Sarnia). There are two border crossings between Ontario and western New York that allow commercial trucks: the Peace Bridge (between Buffalo and Fort Erie), and the Lewiston–Queenston Bridge.
The vast majority of U.S.–Canada truck traffic goes over one of those four bridges because the vast majority of it is from southern Ontario, and the Great Lakes are in the way. None of those crossings is particularly pleasant in normal times for truckers. Hours-long lines for customs aren’t unusual.
If you wanted to make truckers’ lives worse, you could hardly do better than blocking off the busiest one. There’s a reason the Canadian Trucking Alliance was quick to condemn the convoys even though it opposed the vaccine mandates before they went into effect. The American Trucking Associations added its condemnation yesterday, as protests may be brewing in the U.S. as well.
Truckers need highways, and they need the Ambassador Bridge. That one bridge alone carries over 20 percent of all truck traffic between the U.S. and all of Canada, not just Ontario. Its blockage has resulted in miles-long backups at the Blue Water Bridge as trucks rerouted there instead. Some truckers have opted for the Peace Bridge, adding hundreds of miles to their journeys. One driver told FreightWaves, “Now, I’m driving five hours out of my way just to deliver this load.”
On Wednesday, the Peace Bridge began to see backups as well, the Buffalo News reported. Traffic was at a near standstill in both directions. And more convoys are expected to converge in Buffalo this weekend. “Organizers hope to form another procession from Penn Station in Manhattan to the Peace Bridge that will combine with local rallies and demonstrations with speakers Saturday and Sunday,” the Buffalo News reports. They claim not to want to disrupt traffic, but even if they don’t want to, hundreds of vehicles converging on the area at the same time will cause more problems for truckers who are just trying to do their jobs.
Automakers are among the businesses most directly harmed by the bridge blockades. The Detroit Free Press reports that General Motors and Ford have both had to cancel shifts because parts are stuck on the wrong side of the border. GM reduced operations at its Lansing Delta Township Assembly plant on Wednesday and Thursday, and Ford’s Ontario facilities in Oakville and Windsor had to reduce production. Factories in Toledo and Flint also had to cancel shifts, and Toyota facilities in Ontario and Kentucky anticipate disruptions. GM chartered planes to fly parts from Ontario to Fort Wayne to avoid having to close a facility there. And the damage is already done going into the future. Because of parts shortages from the bridge blockage, Ford employees at the Ohio Assembly Plant in Avon Lake have already been laid off for the next week, according to Toledo’s CBS affiliate.
The Free Press quoted an economic analysis that estimated the “Freedom Convoy” has cost $51 million in lost wages for auto-industry workers in Michigan this week. And that doesn’t include lost wages in any other state or province or other industries that are also affected. These are mostly blue-collar workers’ wages we’re talking about.
Ontario premier Doug Ford declared a state of emergency today concerning the Ambassador Bridge blockade, and rightly so. He said the provincial government will make it illegal to block borders and highways, with hefty fines and prison terms for violators. “Your right to make a political statement does not outweigh the right of hundreds of thousands of workers to earn their living,” Ford said.
The disruptions caused by these blockades are far worse than the disruptions caused by the vaccine mandates. While it’s not ideal, and the mandates should be repealed, businesses can work around having 10–15 percent fewer truck drivers available for cross-border routes (85–90 percent of Canadian truck drivers are estimated to be vaccinated). It’s much harder to work around blocked-off border crossings, and workers from Ontario to Kentucky and beyond are losing money because of the blockades.
The vaccine mandates were a bad idea because they added new, totally unnecessary stress to supply chains and the workers who make them run. Now, on top of that, the vaccinated truckers can’t do their jobs properly, either, because a bunch of protesters have decided to block highways. Everyone whose job depends on the supplies those truckers carry faces the consequences as well. Supporting people who are trying to make a living in cross-border trade means opposing vaccine mandates and opposing these blockades. It does no one any good to valorize lawlessness.