US President Joe Biden’s administration on Thursday urged Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to use its federal powers to end a truck blockade by Canadians protesting the country’s COVID-19 restrictions, as the demonstration forced auto plants on both sides of the border to shut down or scale back production.
For the fourth straight day, scores of truckers taking part in what they dubbed the Freedom Convoy blocked the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit, disrupting the flow of auto parts and other products between the two countries.
The White House said that US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg spoke with their Canadian counterparts and urged them to help resolve the standoff.
Photo: AFP
Canadian Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Marco Mendicino said that Royal Canadian Mounted Police reinforcements are being sent to Windsor, Ottawa and Coutts, Alberta, where another border blockade is happening.
Trudeau met virtually with leaders of Canada’s opposition late on Thursday and said that he spoke with Windsor’s mayor.
Trudeau’s office said that there is a willingness to “respond with whatever it takes” to end the blockades.
Conservative Ontario Premier Doug Ford cut off funding for the protests by asking a court to freeze millions of dollars in donations to the convoy through crowd-funding site GiveSendGo. Ford has called the protests an occupation.
Canadian officials previously got GoFundMe to cut off funding after protest organizers used the site to raise about C$10 million (US$7.86 million). GoFundMe determined that the fundraising effort contravened the platform’s terms of service due to unlawful activity.
With political and economic pressure mounting, Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens announced that the city would seek a court injunction to end the occupation.
“The economic harm is not sustainable and it must come to an end,” he said.
In the US, authorities braced for the possibility of similar truck-borne protests inspired by the Canadians, and authorities in Paris and Belgium banned road blockades to head off disruptions there, too.
The US Department of Homeland Security said in a bulletin to local and state law enforcement agencies that it has received reports that truckers are planning to “potentially block roads in major metropolitan cities” in a protest against vaccine mandates and other issues.
The agency said that the convoy could begin in Southern California as early as this weekend, possibly disrupting traffic around the Super Bowl, and reach Washington next month in time for the State of the Union address, a copy of Tuesday’s bulletin showed.
The White House said that the department is “surging additional staff” to the Super Bowl just in case.
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