The American Trucking Associations officially weighed in on growing turmoil at the U.S.-Canada border as demonstrations that started as trucker protests against the vaccine mandate spiral into costly supply chain delays.
“ATA strongly opposes any protest activities that disrupt public safety and compromise the economic and national security of the United States,” ATA President and CEO Chris Spear said in a statement issued Thursday.
“We held serious concerns about the unintended impact a vaccine mandate would have on our nation’s supply chain and ongoing COVID response efforts, which is why ATA challenged the OSHA rule all the way to the Supreme Court — where we prevailed.
“We’ll continue to advocate on behalf of our members for policies that enable the industry to keep the supply chain moving, and we’ll do so in ways that do not hinder the safe and timely flow of commerce that everybody depends on.”
Also on Thursday, the Teamsters Union called on demonstration organizers to end the protest and work with the Canadian government to find a solution.
“Our economy is growing under the Biden Administration, and this disruption in international trade threatens to derail the gains we have made. Our members are some of the hardest workers in the country and are being prevented from doing their jobs,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa.
Canada closed its border on Jan. 15 to U.S. truck drivers who could not show proof of vaccination. The U.S. imposed the same restriction on Canadian drivers the following week.
While some large truckload carriers like those represented by ATA are not seeing a significant issue with unvaccinated drivers, anecdotally the mandates have had a disproportionate effect on owner-operators.
Earlier this week the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association called on both President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to lift the cross-border vaccination mandates for its members, calling them “short-sighted policies that disrupt commerce, put truckers out of work and create shortages for essential supplies.”
Watch: Trucker convoys headed to U.S.?
Responding specifically to the protests and demonstrations in Canada that began in response to the mandates, OOIDA emphasized that as a nonprofit trade association “we support our members’ choices to legally and peacefully protest but we do not participate,” Norita Taylor, OOIDA’s director of public relations, told FreightWaves.
“We will continue to push for the issues important to them long after any protests are over. We would like for leaders in D.C. to listen to, and take action on, the concerns of truck drivers that have been expressed to them for years such as the truck parking shortage, detention time, retention of drivers and government overreach.”
The protests and cross-border delays, meanwhile, are starting to disrupt automobile production, according to news reports. Trucking bottlenecks have extended beyond the Ambassador Bridge to the Blue Water Bridge linking Port Huron, Michigan, to Sarnia, Ontario.
FreightWaves reporting from the area on Thursday revealed that backups at the bridge are adding hours to freight-hauling drive times and raising carrier costs.
Denise
FREEDOM…FREEDOM…FREEDOM!!!
This is about our freedom and our rights! Stop imposing things on us that goes against the Constitution! It’s not about commerce, it’s about the lies our government is trying to feed us. Trying to scare us into SUBMISSION! They were voted in to represent us not to ENSLAVE us! We have the right to express our opinions and peacefully protest. The Truckers haven’t broken our system, our broken government has! The elected officials no longer speak for us, the truckers do! Government is trying to take away our GOD given rights as human beings by getting us to turn on one another! A NEW WORLD ORDER! This is a Dictatorship,Communistic, Tyranny in the making!!
What the Government is doing is NOT DEMOCRACY! How can it be when they are not listening to the People! They are using the Truckers as a scapegoats for what they have done. Truckers have familys to feed and bills to pay just like everyone else. They already sacrifice so much more because of their job. So many rules and more all the time. Yet they get blamed for everything, truckers don’t get to vote on new rules imposed them. They are just told to do it! Government is using Race, Sexuality and Religion to seperate us. We can’t let them do this.
UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL!!
People around the world….Rise up let your voices be heard!!
Vincent Cook
The ATA and the Teamsters should be ashamed of themselves for siding with the billionaire leaders of the World Economic Forum in their brazen attempt to resort to baseless fear-mongering and forced use of risky snake-oil remedies as a pretext for imposing a Chinese-style system of universal surveillance, relentless propaganda, mass censorship, demonization and suppression of dissenters, and intrusive social engineering upon the entire Western world.
The right of self-ownership is not negotiable. Autonomy over one’s own body is inherent part of one’s capacity to produce and to participate in the life of one’s nation, so sacrificing such autonomy necessarily produces economic and national insecurity. Those who are not sick and not posing an imminent threat to the lives of others should not be jabbed, isolated from their fellow humans, or masked against their will. Without the freedom to make one’s own decisions about such matters, there is no security.
Only special pleading by narrow-minded interest groups can pretend otherwise. When people are targeted for defamation, deplatforming, and discrimination for the crime of thinking differently, and are systematically barred from working, going to church, seeing family members, getting hospital care, going shopping, sharing their thoughts on-line with others, etc., don’t expect the economy and the nation to function normally. Our economic and national security has already been seriously compromised by the Davos tyrants; and if truckers now happen to be in a unique position to deliver a solution to that problem, all who are loyal to the values our society was founded upon will treasure their precious cargo of freedom far above anything else they could be carrying.
Tony
They already admit the mandates have caused supply chain issues, yet the governments of both countries have done nothing to alleviate the problem. Why should the truckers do ANYTHING to help both feckless “leaders” make things easier on the government? I have an idea, make it easier on the truckers. Not everyone àgrees with Fraudci. Including a large pàrt of the medical community. Get over your quest for more power and control of those who employ you. Wanna resolve this issue? Do the right thing. Start listening to youremployer’s. The people who wanna get vaccinated, already have been. The folks who wanna wear masks, already do. You in government work for us. Maybe you need to reread the constitution, and a little history. You can read, can’t you?