Protesters in semi-trailer trucks, farm equipment and other vehicles have blocked all highway lanes at Manitoba’s main Canada-U.S. border crossing on Thursday.
Simon Resch, whose family owns and operates the duty free shop in Emerson, Man., said both northbound and southbound lanes on Highway 75 were shut down by protesters by the time he arrived at work early in the morning.
“There is no traffic coming through,” he said. “Totally blocked.” He got to the shop this morning via back roads, but the location is otherwise inac-cessible to the general public due to the blockade.
Resch said Canada Border Services Agency no-tified him late Wednesday night of the coming pro-test.
The protest is part of a number of demonstra-tions in cities and at border crossings across Canada by people against pandemic restrictions and a fed-eral vaccine mandate for truckers.
Trucking industry organizations have spoken against the protests and say about nine in 10 cross-border truckers are vaccinated.
Neither Resch nor RCMP had an estimate of how many vehicles are in the Emerson blockade on Thursday morning.
RCMP Sgt. Paul Manaigre said Mounties from Winnipeg and the Morris detachment headed to Emerson Thursday morning in hopes of establishing a dialogue with protest organizers.
RCMP do not want to take a “heavy-handed ap-proach” and risk escalating the situation, he said. “That’s the critical piece is getting that beginning conversation going,” Manaigre told Information Radio host Marcy Markusa. “You want to start off on the right foot and hopefully progress is made.”
He said it was unclear whether the people be-hind the blockade also organized a protest at the border a few weeks ago. That protest left some lanes of traffic open, but the one on Thursday entirely blocks traffic, Manaigre said.—AP
