‘Freedom Rally’ is distracting from truckers’ other day-to-day battles, some argue

As truck drivers and supporters of a convoy headed to the national capital rode through the Toronto area Thursday, other drivers and advocates said the circus of the “Freedom Rally” has been distracting from the issues truck drivers are facing in Ontario.

A parade of vehicles has been making its way across Canada in protest of vaccine mandates, and the fact that unvaccinated drivers must now isolate for 14 days when they cross the US-Canada border.

However, Navi Aujla, the executive director of Labor Community Services of Peel, an organization that helps residents with employment-related issues, says many drivers have other pressing concerns they want to be vocal about – particularly wage theft.

“We’re seeing a huge influx of truck drivers that are coming to us for help with issues they’re facing at work, and the majority of those are related to misclassification,” Aujla said.

Truck drivers have been classified by their employers as independent contractors when they are actually being treated as employees, Aujla said.

“What we’re seeing is that workers are facing a lot of illegal deduction from their wages; they aren’t getting access to vacation pay or overtime, ”she said. “And workers have little recourse in terms of getting those wages back.”

The Star published an investigation last month into how long-haul truckers have filed thousands of complaints about unpaid wages and other abuses. Many have not seen these cases resolved.

The brewing frustration with the Ontario government’s lack of support for low-wage workers could be leading to some of the support for the rally, Aujla said.

“The actual solution, where the government should have taken more steps, was supporting workers,” she said. That means more mandated sick days, income supports if workers have to take time off due to illness, access to rapid testing and more funding for health care and hospitals in regions like Bramptonshe explained.

That’s what advocacy should be focused on, Aujla said: “Because those things were not in place, we continue to see these lockdowns that are frustrating for workers.”

Manan Gupta, publisher of Road Today, a Toronto-based magazine that caters to South Asian truckers, says he wishes issues that affect the entire trucking industry were getting national headlines, rather than a mandate that only affects the 10 percent who are unvaccinated.

“It is only a fringe group of truckers, which are being highlighted through this convoy and they are being aided by other political vested interests, most of which is anti-Trudeau and anti-Liberal Party sentiment,” Gupta said.

He said there’s no shortage of issues facing the trucking industry – such as a labor shortage, inadequate road infrastructure, and exploitation of newcomers by companies – that are equally deserving of attention. For example, he says, most of the highways in rural Canada are not twinned, which creates unsafe conditions; the processes for truckers’ education, testing, and qualifications also need to be streamlined.

“We do not have enough infrastructure, the newcomers who join the industry do not get enough training and then they are abused,” Gupta said.

In June, electronic logging devices will be mandated for truck drivers, an issue that will significantly increase costs for companies and which is not getting enough attention, Gupta said.

Furthermore, the trucking industry is in desperate need of diversification, Gupta said. They are trying to increase the participation of women, who he said are only three per cent of truckers in Canada, as well as veterans, Indigenous Canadians and millennials.

“We are finding it very challenging to attract millennials to the industry. They do not want to come and join the trucking industry. So these kinds of protests, these kinds of headlines, are not going to help, ”Gupta said.

“When there are negative headlines, when there are shutdowns, convoys and threats to peace and all those kinds of things, it does not help anybody.”

Still, he was hesitant to completely condemn the convoy, and said the government needs to find a way to ensure essential transportation workers are not left out of work.

Attar Sodhi has been a truck driver for 12 years, with the past four spent in Canada after moving from Australia.

Sodhi is a member of the Naujawan Support Network, Brampton-area workers who aim to prevent the exploitation of international students and employees by representing them. He said the largest concern of drivers right now is wage theft.

Sodhi said when Brampton truckers have gathered they’ve faced a lot of stigma, as immigrant workers, speaking out. That’s made it harder for the drivers to gain support, but he said they are hoping serious consequences are created for employers who misclassify workers.

Many truckers are living paycheck to paycheck and desperately need the government to be more diligent with investigating the wage theft issue, he said.

In the GTA trucker groups, Sodhi said there is less concern about vaccine mandates and more worries about “the issues of wage theft, safer roads and community safety.”

On Thursday afternoon, meanwhile, hundreds of people gathered in the parking lot on the west side of the Vaughan Mills mall near the Bass Pro shop to support the convoy.

Many of the supporters carried signs that contained COVID-19 misinformation, anti-vaccine and anti-mask views, or slogans disparaging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the media and Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam.