Truckers in Canada are vowing to shut down the capital city over over-restrictive Covid-19 mandates and restrictions; well at least for the weekend anyway. The truckers, who have been arriving in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, over the past few days, plan to hold their main rally at noon on Saturday at Capital-Hill to voice their grievances to Canada’s prime minister.

The truckers, 75% of whom are fully vaccinated say they are fed up with border restrictions that have slowed down the industry at least 50% compared to normal times. They say continued border restrictions are not only a waste of time and energy; the vaccination mandate for cross-border truckers is causing a strain on manpower as many truckers are either choosing to retire early or leaving the industry all together instead of getting vaccinated.    

Canada and the United States share the longest land border in the world. They are one of the largest Trading partners in the world also and along with the addition of Mexico, thousands of trucks cross all the borders everyday carrying all kinds of goods from the Energy and Consumer goods industries to the Farming and Dairy industries. The Canada-US border was completely closed to regular traffic for almost two years because of the pandemic and only reopened with restrictions this past November.

Over the same time, trucks continued to roll between the borders with few restrictions as they were deemed essential to the economies of all three countries. However, when Covid-19 vaccines went into wide use, cross-border truckers were then hit with a vaccine mandate like Doctors, Nurses, and Teachers.

The government says that they always welcome peaceful protests and although the rally will be a major disruption to life in the capital, they look forward to hearing the concerns of the trucking industry. What the government fears the most about the trucker’s rally and are not looking forward to are the Right-wing and Conspiracy groups who’ve embedded themselves in the rally.

Online activity from these groups in Canada have spiked ever-since the rally was announced and many of their members and supporters also plan to attend. Some of them even say it will be their “January 6^th” in the effort to defend personal freedoms in Canada. I just don’t see why they’re waving Confederate Flags unless their true aim is to support white supremacy.

Right wing politicians are also gearing up for the trucker’s rally as they hope to syphon support from anti-vaxers and anti-Covid mandate protestors. They’ve lost the past two federal elections and like the conservatives in America, they hope to harness the frustrations of so-called “freedom fighters” and translate it into votes at the ballot box in the next election.