The truckers’ strike took root in a larger context, that of collective fatigue with a pandemic. Everything was going well for the vaccine passport until it was imposed on truckers. From then on, he suddenly creates a social crisis, like a pebble that pierces the hull of a rowboat which, until then, was quietly descending the river.
Posted yesterday at 10:00 a.m.
This is an atypical strike in the sense that many of the strikers are not salaried. The group of protesters is formed for a good part of small entrepreneurs who earn their living with a single truck. But they can still benefit from a Supreme Court judgment in 2015 which establishes the strike as constitutional law. Prohibited from crossing the border, they have nothing to lose by protesting. Because these truckers have no income, whether or not they are on strike.
This crisis is driven by 10-15% of truckers who oppose vaccines. But they can count on at least 10% of Canadians who refuse vaccination, which immediately represents nearly 4 million citizens.
Besides that, the initial stake of this strike stretches to the political management of the COVID-19 crisis, shaking the whole political spectrum in a context where everyone, vaccinated or not, is fed up. .
The two parties in conflict are firmly entrenched in their position as if it were a war of religions. The strikers are asserting a principle of individual freedom linked to the inviolability of the human body from the angle of Article 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights who affirms that “everyone has the right to … liberty and security of person”. They deplore that the vaccine does not dispense with catching or transmitting the virus. The political powers present the vaccine passport as an obligatory corridor out of the crisis. They count on the support of the vaccinated, followers of a vaccine which, for lack of exemption from catching the virus or transmitting it, would protect them from death. The sacred character of the aforementioned principles makes them irreducible. So a compromise is unlikely unless the pandemic subsides.
But Canadians are captive to truckers for a few reasons. On the one hand, the federal government privatized the railways in 1995. On the other hand, it was hardly more preoccupied with domestic aviation.
By leaving transport to the laws of the market, deliveries of goods, especially in the regions, were dumped on trucks. This is how the trucking industry has become essential in Canada.
And as if all this were not enough, there is currently a shortage of truckers. So if there’s one stakeholder group that needs to be treated with respect, it’s the truckers.
Their strike generates some significant downsides. First, it is noisy and bulky. Second, it weakens an already struggling supply chain. Third, it captures the support of a good part of citizens tired of the pandemic or who are wary of its politicization. On the contrary, this strike arouses a certain popular opposition but this one struggles to organize itself on the one hand, for lack of tangible personal stake, and on the other hand because hundreds of screaming trucks offer an intimidating aspect and do not have no equivalent.
Truckers cannot really hope to win legal remedies in the current context. In fact, faced with the requirement of a vaccination passport, the arbitration courts are currently deciding in favor of the employers. In addition, the Federal Court denied a request for an injunction against mandatory vaccinations for federal employees.
But these same courts could move towards better respect for the individual freedoms provided for in the charters of rights as the pandemic subsides. Because it is a question here of weighing the duty of public health with the respect of individual rights.
Unlike Canada, American courts have given priority to individual liberties both at the level of certain states and at the Supreme Court which, in January 2022, blocked Joe Biden’s plan to impose vaccination in health care companies. 100 or more employees.
The limit of the vaccine passport is that its value cannot exceed that of the vaccine. It can be useful, but a prolonged strike by truckers can also have serious direct consequences such as a disruption of supply, and indirect ones by spilling over into other social issues. Between the two, you have to know how to choose according to a principle of balance of disadvantages. Because obviously, truckers have launched a movement that politicians had not anticipated, which can overtake them and which accentuates the social divide. This is what gives this strike a unique character.