Another protest blockade of a key Canada-U.S. trade corridor is expected to wrap up by Wednesday.
Manitoba RCMP on Tuesday reported they “are now confident that a resolution has been reached” with protestors who, since Thursday, have blockaded Highway 75 leading to the border crossing at Emerson, Man., about 100 km south of Winnipeg.
The Mounties said they’re also confident the demonstrators in question “will soon be leaving the area” and “full access” to the Emerson border port “will be restored.”
RCMP said they’re “co-ordinating the departure of the remaining demonstrators” and expect that to be completed by Wednesday.
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The blockade near Emerson covered all four lanes of Highway 75 at PR 200, with 50 vehicles including “semi trailers, farm implements and passenger vehicles” involved at the outset, RCMP said at the time.
As of mid-afternoon Sunday, that blockade had grown to an estimated 75 vehicles, though RCMP said that number “continues to fluctuate as vehicles arrive and depart the blockade.”
The Emerson protestors had allowed emergency and police vehicles and “some agriculture transports,” such as those carrying livestock, to pass to the U.S., but other traffic was prevented from crossing, RCMP said.
The blockade near Emerson was one of several mounted across Canada in tandem with a demonstration still underway in Ottawa concerning current COVID-19 vaccine mandates for cross-border truckers, among a number of grievances related to pandemic-related public health policy and federal politics generally.
The Ottawa protest and related blockades on Monday became the subject of the federal government’s declaration of a “public order emergency” under the Emergencies Act.
Grievances over vaccine passports and other pandemic-related restrictions have also been blunted over the past few days. Several provinces, citing their COVID-19 caseload outlooks, have been reducing or removing restrictions and/or laying out timelines to do so.
Also, while the Emerson blockade is expected to end with no participants being ticketed or arrested, incidents in Ottawa and multiple arrests among alleged participants in the Coutts blockade have weighed on demonstrators’ claims of peaceful protest.
Canadian agriculture and agrifood groups have also publicly called for the blockades to end, jointly asking Friday for “immediate action by all parties to fully reopen Canada’s trade corridors.”
The blockade at Coutts — Alberta’s busiest Canada-U.S. crossing — was largely dispersed Tuesday, as was a blockade at the Pacific Highway border crossing at Surrey, B.C., according to local news reports.
The blockade at Windsor’s Ambassador Bridge, meanwhile, was cleared Sunday on enforcement of an unrelated court injunction granted Friday at the request of affected auto industry groups and local and provincial officials.
According to a 2013 multi-jurisdictional study, the crossing connecting Emerson to Pembina, N.D. was estimated to be Canada’s fifth busiest land crossing in terms of total annual truck trade in 2011, at $16.9 billion.
That value put Emerson behind only Windsor, Fort Erie and Sarnia, Ont. and Lacolle, Que., but ahead of Surrey. That study forecasts the annual value of truck trade through Emerson to hit $22.9 billion by 2025. — Glacier FarmMedia Network
