On Saturday, the U.S. government began enforcing a new policy that Canadian truckers crossing the land border from Canada into the U.S. must show proof of vaccination.
This mirrors the decision of the Trudeau government a week ago to ban U.S. truckers from crossing into Canada, without proof of vaccination.
This means there will be more interruptions of supply chains that were already under siege, including for such basic necessities as food.
Given this, are unvaccinated truckers — who don’t spend much time in either country after delivering their goods — such a significant public health threat that it outweighs the importance of maintaining the flow of goods between the two countries?
Did the unvaccinated status of Canadian and U.S. truckers in the many months when there were no vaccines at the start of the pandemic contribute significantly to the spread of COVID-19?
If so, where are the scientific studies that prove this, given estimates that 80% to 90% of Canadian truckers and 50% to 60% of American truckers are now vaccinated.
As Dr. Sylvain Charlebois — senior director of the agri-food analytics lab and a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University — warned in the Sun last week, “this is the first public health measure with the potential to disrupt trade between Canada and the United States since the pandemic started.”
About two-thirds of the $650 billion in Canada-U.S. trade annually is delivered by trucks.
Decreasing the number of truck shipments because of this policy will inevitably contribute to shortages of groceries and other important products, further driving up prices to consumers in a period of rising inflation.
As Charlebois noted, “Much of the volume comes during the winter months when produce from the southern states offers welcome supplies to Canadian consumers. Stopping some of that business could exacerbate the driver shortage the industry is already experiencing and could drive up retail prices even further in the weeks to come.”
We understand the desire of both the Canadian and U.S. governments to limit the spread of the contagious Omicron variant.
But policies designed to do this should be based on good judgment and common sense, lest the measures cause even greater harms to the public.
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