EDMONTON, Alberta (LifeSiteNews) – Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said a new COVID jab mandate for truckers enacted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should be reversed at once, warning the policy will hurt an already stressed supply chain.
“We can’t afford to lose potentially thousands of truckers on our roads bringing groceries up from the U.S,” Kenney said at a news conference Thursday.
“I think we need to apply these policies with a heavy dose of common sense. Common sense tells us that we are at the peak of supply chain constraints across North America, around the world, [and] huge inflation,” said Kenney.
Speaking to reporters, Kenney asked the Trudeau government to “please extend” an earlier exemption that allowed for un-jabbed truckers to cross the border without having to quarantine for two weeks.
Some Canadian trucking companies have already reported driver shortages as a direct result of the COVID jab mandate for all haulers crossing the border.
And the new policy has already caused food supply issues as well, practically hitting hard eastern Canada.
Pictures of empty shelves in grocery stores, especially in Ontario, are becoming common.
Members of Parliament from the Conservative Party of Canada blasted Trudeau’s trucker jab mandate.
Southern Manitoba Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP Ted Falk called it “wrong” and not “constitutional,” while speaking from a trucker protest at the U.S.-Canada border earlier in the week.
“Trudeau has arbitrarily villainized these brave men and women are a threat,” Falk said in a Facebook post on Monday at a trucker protest against at the Canada-U.S. border in Emerson, Manitoba.
CPC MP Pierre Poilievre went after the mandate Wednesday, calling it a “vaccine vendetta” against un-jabbed truckers.
Lawyer for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) Allison Kindle Pejovic recently told LifeSiteNews that COVID jab mandates as an “affront to democracy” and are something expected only from “authoritarian regimes.”
Mandate will impact 30% of Canadian truck drivers
Late last week, the Trudeau government reinstated a requirement that all truckers crossing the border be “fully vaccinated” against COVID-19 by January 15.
The mandate came despite a report that Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) said un-jabbed truck drivers would be allowed to enter Canada from the United States.
The federal government claimed that the CBSA message was “provided in error,” and that it would indeed be going ahead with the jab mandate. All truckers crossing into Canada need to show proof of vaccination upon arrival using the ArriveCan app.
Canadian truckers coming from the United States who are not jabbed will still be allowed to enter the country. However, they will be forced to do a COVID test and then quarantine for up to two weeks. Un-jabbed American truckers will be denied entry.
The jab mandate for truckers was first announced on November 19 by the federal government.
After this announcement, trade associations from Canada and the U.S. began warning that the vaccine mandate could harshly impact an already stressed food and goods supply chain, which has seen massive disruptions due to the COVID crisis.
According to the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA), it is estimated that the mandate will impact up to 30,000, or around 30 percent, of Canadian truck drivers and about 16,000 American truck drivers who enter Canada regularly.
Meanwhile Canada’s inflation rate hit a 30-year high, a level not seen since 1991, fueled by massive Trudeau government COVID borrowing and spending, as well as through the funding of extremist environmental programs combined with billions given to pro-abortion groups. The U.S. is seeing similarly steep inflation.
Kenney, despite backtracking on introducing vaccine passports in Alberta, has said he will not mandate COVID injections or any other jabs in Alberta.
He reiterated this promise most recently after Canada’s Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos recently said that provincial governments might soon introduce mandatory vaccination policies,
After Quebec Premier François Legault said he would tax un-jabbed citizens, Kenney condemned the move as “inhumane and unethical and certainly un-Canadian.”
Despite Kenney’s promise to not mandate COVID jabs, under his watch, all healthcare workers were forced to get COVID jabs or lose their jobs. Many workers were placed on unpaid leave and or fired.
However, a recent legal victory by an Alberta dental student has allowed for un-jabbed healthcare workers to be allowed back on the jab providing they take a COVID test.
Under Kenney as well, it must not be forgotten that no fewer than three Christian pastors were jailed for breaking COVID rules.
Truckers in Canada are fighting back against the jab mandates, however, and starting this Monday will begin a nationwide “Freedom Convoy” to protest the trucker COVID jab mandates will begin a “slow roll” protest to Ottawa.
According to the “Freedom Convoy 2022” Go Fund Me page, the group says truckers are “taking our fight to the doorsteps of our Federal Government and demanding that they cease all mandates against its people.”
The group to date has raised $1 million in the span of only a few days, which to help go toward the cost of “fuel, food and lodgings to help ease the pressures of this arduous task.”
LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here.