We have talked about this quite a bit. {Go Deep} I’m not sure how this attempted needle threading is going to work out in the longer term. The announcement has come as a surprise to the Canadian trucking industry.

Apparently fearing the economic consequences, the Canadian government has dropped the vaccination requirement for Canadian truck drivers, and instructed border officials to permit unvaccinated Canadian truckers to cross the border.

The vaccine mandate for cross border truckers was scheduled to begin in a few days, January 15th.  However, the Canadian vaccination rule for U.S. truckers will remain in place.

MONTREAL — The federal government is backing down from its vaccine mandate for Canadian truckers three days before it was set to take effect.  Ottawa announced in mid-November that truck drivers crossing into Canada would need to be fully vaccinated by this Saturday.

But on Wednesday evening Canada Border Services Agency spokeswoman Rebecca Purdy told The Canadian Press that Canadian big-riggers will not have to quarantine if they are unvaccinated or have received only one dose.

[…] The new rule will still take effect for American truckers, who will be turned away at the border unless they’ve been inoculated starting this weekend. (read more)

How the hell can Canada justify dropping the vaxx mandate for Canadian truck drivers, but not for U.S. inbound shipments?  Are they preparing for a massive amount of rig switching at the border?   Good grief, what a mess.

♦ Here’s where the weakness of Biden and Buttigieg comes into play. If the U.S. side of the border enforces the vaccine mandate, the Canadian truckers will still be blocked, as the U.S. truckers are now stopped from entering Canada. However, that would take a U.S. administration ready to enforce equality in the supply chain against Canada.

There could already be an agreement between the White House and Canadian officials, and we just don’t know about it. However, I would not make that assumption. With this administration everything is done on the fly as a reaction to the politics of events.

Surely some enterprising journalist in DC is going to ask the White House what the U.S. response is?

Then again, maybe not.  After all, the insufferable DC doofus tribe likely have no concept of the chaos that can unfold over this trucker vaccine mandate writ large; which is scheduled to take effect on January 15th for cross border trucking, and then on January 22nd for all truck drivers inside the U.S. hauling domestic routes.

If Canada has dropped the vaccine requirement for their truckers, but not U.S. drivers, the Biden administration needs to hit them back.

Keep watching this issue, because the January 15th deadline was also supposed to take place at the U.S-Mexico crossing.

This situation reminds me of the Pennsylvania state government shutting down truck stops, rest areas and fuel stations during the beginning of the pandemic, then wondering why all their stores were empty within days? Duh!