Kenney calls on Liberals to pause trucker COVID-19 vaccine mandate

The mandate, imposed by Ottawa to help curb the spread of the coronavirus, has cost Canadian trucking companies about 10 per cent of their international drivers.

The premier of Canada’s Alberta province on Thursday called on the federal government to pause a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers that companies say will disrupt the supply chain and fuel inflation.

The mandate, imposed by Ottawa to help curb the spread of the coronavirus, has cost Canadian trucking companies about 10 per cent of their international drivers, six top executives said this week. They said they are hiking wages to lure new operators during the worst labour shortage they have experienced.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, at a news conference in Calgary, urged the government to extend an exemption that had been in place for truckers since the start of the pandemic.

Kenney made his request on the same day the United States confirmed its own vaccine border mandate for truckers would start on Saturday. Canada’s has been in place since Jan. 15.

“Common sense tells us that we are at the peak of supply chain constraints across North America, around the world, huge inflation,” Kenney said.

This is not the moment “to lose potentially thousands of truckers on our roads, bringing groceries up from the US and who knows maybe (COVID) rapid test kits as well,” he said.

As many as 32,000, or 20 per cent, of the 160,000 Canadian and American cross-border truck drivers may be taken off the roads by the mandate, the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) estimates. The industry was short some 18,000 drivers even before the mandate, CTA said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has resisted industry pressure to delay the mandate since it was first announced in November. On Wednesday Trudeau defended the mandate, saying Canada was “aligned” with the United States, its largest trading partner.