So much damage done in protests - Keith Roulston editorial

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, world events are moving so quickly that looking back at the blockades of the Canadian border by angry protestors seems like yesterday’s news, and yet it might have greater effect on Canadians’ futures than the events of Europe.
   

People protesting vaccine mandates in Canada, truckers, farmers and others, interrupted trade at border crossings at Windsor, Coutts, Alberta, at Emerson, Manitoba, and to a lesser extent near Sarnia and in B.C. They drew support from U.S. residents who gave millions of dollars to funding agencies to support the protesters and U.S. media commentators like several Fox News hosts who cheered them on.
   

The protests are gone, now, dissolved by police actions that opened the border again, but the damage may be much longer lasting than the protesters envisioned. Writing in the Globe and Mail, Edward Alden, a visiting professor of U.S.-Canada economic relations at Western Washington University and the author of The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration and Security Since 9/11 wrote recently that the failure of Canadian officials to keep cross-border trade flowing “has done enormous damage to Canada’s reputation at the worst possible time, when some in the United States are more than happy to start cutting Canadian companies out of critical supply chains.”
   

Alden quotes  Flavio Volpe, the lobbyist for Canadian auto parts firms, as saying the border disruptions have “caused potentially irreparable harm to Canada’s reputation as a reliable trading partner.”
       

The cost in lost trade while the border was closed amounted to $400 million in Windsor, $73 million in Emerson and $44 million in Coutts every day. I doubt the protesters in various cities even thought of the enormous damage that was being caused to the 90 per cent of truckers who are vaccinated or the thousands of people who had their hours cut because their factories couldn’t ship across the border because of the blockades. They were concerned only with their own rights. 
   

Meanwhile, the premiers of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Quebec also expressed concerns about invoking the Emergencies Act, which the federal government withdrew two days after it was used by combined police forces in Ottawa to clear out protesters who had taken over the heart of the city for nearly a month.
   

The border closures may not have been seen as all that important by western Canadian premiers, but they were costly in Ontario. The blockade at Windsor cost the Canadian auto industry more than $1 billion.
   

More than 160 industry groups, chambers of commerce and trade boards signed an open letter urging Canadian government officials to bring an end to blockades and voicing concern that Canada could suffer damage to its reputation. “We are already hearing calls to move investment, contracts, and production from Canada because of our inability to guarantee timely delivery to international customers,” the letter stated.
   

We have several companies in our area, employing local workers, that make parts for the auto industry who depend on being able to ship freely across the border.
   

Yet while the bulk of trade in Ontario involves the auto industry, and therefore doesn’t affect western Canada directly, the demonstrations at the border crossing between Coutts and Montana, were particularly damaging to the meat industry. Canada exported $4.7 billion in beef and pork to the U.S. in 2021 and the majority of it went through Coutts, said Chris White, CEO of the Canadian Meat Council.
   

Exports from Ontario farms were bound to be affected by blockades in Windsor.
   

Here’s betting that the majority of those protesting in the blockades never thought of such long-term ramifications of their actions. I’ve taken part in a couple of large scale demonstrations before – one against the provincial government for better student loans back when I was a student and one large demonstration of farmers mostly from Ontario and Québec years ago trying to change federal government policy. It’s an us-against-them kind of action. There isn’t much room for other opinions.
   

What’s more, many of those participating in the recent protests weren’t on board with their leaders (or at least I hope they weren’t) who have espoused Islamphobic, anti-Semitic and other hateful views.
   

Here’s hoping the protesters don’t lend strength to those in the U.S. (including right-wing supporters like those on Fox News) who will happily turn around and use the border blockages as arguments as to why auto and farming jobs should be “returned” to the U.S.