After much confusion, frustration and concern recently, Ottawa has reaffirmed that truckers will be subject to COVID-19 vaccination requirements if they want to enter the country without self-isolating.
One expert says it could compromise Canada’s food safety, while Jean-Marc Picard, executive director of the Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association, calls it “another curveball for the industry.”
“On November 19, 2021, we announced that effective January 15, 2022, certain categories of travelers who are currently exempt from entry requirements will only be able to enter the country if they are fully vaccinated with one of the approved vaccines for the entry. to Canada,” said a joint statement by the federal ministers of health, transportation and public safety released shortly before 5 p.m. Thursday.
“These groups include various providers of essential services, including truck drivers. Let’s be clear: this has not changed. The information shared yesterday was provided in error. Our teams have been in contact with industry representatives to ensure they have the correct information.”
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A spokesperson for the Canada Border Services Agency told the media in a statement that Canadian truckers would be exempt from vaccination requirements to return to the country.
Picard says that the shifting orientation has been a “mishandled situation, to be honest.”
“Something with that magnitude and that potential impact that it could have on the economy, it was disappointing to see how it was communicated and how it was handled after that,” he tells Global News.
Trade relations between Ottawa and Washington are vital. But the supply chain has already been under immense pressure during the pandemic and the trucking industry has faced a growing driver shortage. Those two factors raise some concern about how Canadians might be affected.
“I think it’s important to protect Canadians from the virus, but this could actually compromise Canada’s food security,” says Sylvain Charlebois, senior director of Dalhousie University’s Agri-Food Analysis Laboratory.
“So we are playing with fire right now at the border.”
Charlebois says this is the first measure introduced that could affect the movement of goods across the border since the start of the pandemic.
“We import more than $21 billion worth of food from the US each year,” he says.
Most of that food is brought in by truckers, he says.
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William Gerhardt, owner of Gerhardt Trucking in Lunenburg, NS, says he supports vaccination.
The company offered to pay truckers for their time to get vaccinated, made sure they would be paid if there were any side effects, and tried to educate employees.
Only one in 10 of its cross-border truckers is not fully vaccinated.
But there is more at stake, he says.
“I think the one thing you’re going to see right away is that there could be a crisis in the supply chain, for sure,” he says. “But my biggest concern is that if … you take 10 percent of the supply, which is no longer enough, out of the market, it’s going to cost Canadians more for everything.”
Gerhardt worries that the mandates will force inexperienced drivers to replace some of those with years of experience behind the wheel.
The rule and projected impact
Industry representatives had tried to convince officials in both Canada and the United States to push back the vaccination deadline.
Canadian Trucking Association President Stephen Laskowski told Global News on Thursday that the industry has been seeking clarity on how the policy would apply.
However, the rules would still apply to any foreign national crossing the border, and US border officials did not indicate that their policy was changing.
The US has planned for a similar mandate to go into effect for any driver crossing into the US from January 22.
The Canadian Trucking Alliance says that 10 to 15 percent of drivers in the industry are currently unvaccinated. Thus, the mandate would remove approximately 12,000 Canadian truckers and thousands more from the US from cross-border shipping routes, a sharp reduction in available workers for an industry already facing labor shortages and restrictions on employment. Supply Chain.
— with Craig Lord files
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Reference-globalnews.ca