Canada Impacted By Protests - USA Next?

Following weeks of demonstrations in Canada, against mandatory vaccines for cross border truckers, the US may be next as protest groups emerge.

The Canadian demonstrations started in January as hundreds of truckers formed the group ‘Freedom Convoy’ and blocked bridges between the US and Canada.

The trucks formed a convoy and then travelled through Canadian provinces before converging on the Capital – Ottawa – on January 29th.

By then, the convoy was joined by thousands of pedestrians and the protest had expanded to include all Covid-19 restrictions and mandates. All major routes in and out of the city were blocked and other provincial capitals were impacted too.

The Ottawa demonstrations lasted for around three weeks, with the final trucks only cleared in the past few days.

There has continually been fears that these protests will roll over into the US and that may be about to happen. A group calling itself ‘People’s Convoy’ is believed to be leaving California, heading for Washington DC, anytime now.

The protest group plan to stop at 10 points along the way and are expected to be joined by at least two further groups in Ohio. They are then intending to head towards the capital, disrupting as much traffic as possible en-route.

It remains to be seen whether this will gain momentum and whether it will disrupt logistics in anyway. The Canadian protests are believed to have reduced cross border movements by around 10% and impacted logistics at local city level.

While cross border movements are critical for international movements to and from the US Mid West, most of that traffic moves by rail and was not badly affected.

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