Trudeau should 'hold the line' on vaccine trucker mandate

On Jan. 15, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal government implemented a vaccine mandate that will require unvaccinated Canadian truck drivers undergo testing and quarantine upon entry into Canada. Unvaccinated Canadian truck drivers are also not permitted to enter the United States. The U.S. implemented its own policy on Jan. 22, barring all unvaccinated individuals travelling for essential or non-essential purposes from entering the country. Industry groups had warned the government that a vaccine requirement for truck drivers would create added pressure on an already-strained supply chain system.

Backlash to the policy has emerged this week, as truckers and protesters from across the country head to Ottawa for a rally against the vaccine mandate.

On this episode of Editor's Edition, Alicja Siekierska and the Public Policy Forum's Sean Speer dig into the trucker vaccine mandate policy, whether the Trudeau government should have moved forward with the policy, and the backlash that has emerged. Speer says that while Trudeau has made mistakes in how he has spoken about the unvaccinated, he argues that the government needs to ‘hold the line’ on the policy. “At its core, the government’s position on these issues is right,” Speer said.