Let's Know Things

This month we talk about trucking, mandates, and astroturfing.

We also discuss protests, online funding, and Ottawa.

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Transcript

In the US and Canada, truck drivers, often called just truckers or drivers, though they're called lorry drivers across a good chunk of the rest of the world, are the folks who drive large to giant trucks, technically called large goods vehicles or heavy goods vehicles, but colloquially called lorries or semis or box trucks, which typically have a driver cabin up front, where they sit when they're driving, and a little living space behind that with a bed, sometimes a microwave and mini fridge, and other such things, like you might find in a small, bachelor-style flat.

These trucks are often designed to haul standardized shipping containers, of the sort companies fill with stuff, lug from continent to continent on cargo ships, and then use giant cranes to unload from those ships, where they are then taken inland and shuffled from point A to point B on one of these vehicles.

In most countries you have to get a special license to drive such a truck, and in some cases there's stratification between different sorts of trucking license, typically divided up based on the size and complexity of the vehicle being driven.

And just as the licenses and in some cases the vehicles vary from country to country, the amount of time and resources required to train a trucker also varies.

In the US, for instance, it can take between a few months and half-a-year to get your commercial driver's license, if you learn through a truck driving school, which is generally enough time to learn how to inspect a truck, drive it safely, learn and demonstrate your knowledge of the vehicles—everything from the cargo securement mechanisms to the air brakes and headlights—and take both practical and written tests.

In Canada, training standards vary a bit from province to province, but they've generally been a little less strict and more rapidly attained than in the US—but a relatively new set of standards will ensure that everyone wanting to earn a trucking license will have at least 103.5 hours of training, along with another 8.5 hours to get their air brake enforcement; some provinces will continue to require more than that, but that's the new minimum, and thus it can take a few weeks to a month or two, depending on whether you take a formal course or study on your own, to earn your commercial truck driving license.

Wherever you happen to live, through, and however the truckers in your neck of the woods earned their licenses, there's been an upending of the industry since the pandemic threw the world's shipping channels—its supply chains—into turmoil back in early 2020. And that's been true globally.

At times, in some places over the past two years, truckers haven't really had anything to do; they've been left sitting idle with no work.

At times, in some places, truckers have been in high demand to the point where there simply aren't enough of them to haul all the stuff that needs hauling.

Some places have seen both extremes with mere months of each other, as other aspects of the global supply chain web, like cargo ships and manufacturing and warehouses and stores, have likewise been kinked and snarled and messed with by the ever-fluctuating variables of the pandemic.

But even limited ebbs and flows can be disastrous, as not having anything to haul for several months can mean no money for truckers who would usually do the hauling. And not enough truck drivers in a given region can lead to surges of investment in new truckers, new infrastructure, new warehouse space and automation, which might then create another lack of work for local truckers, or might become sunk investments as everything spirals in the other direction once more.

Also tricky to navigate have been the shifting sands of government mandates and border regulations.

Some truckers have been unable to work, or stuck in their own or other countries, because borders have been closed or traffic across borders severely limited because of variables beyond their control: a new surge of a new COVID variant arises, and all their plans, their schedules, their work, changes overnight. Sometimes the restrictions change, or the specifics of the restrictions, with little warning. It's been bonkers for everyone to varying degrees, but people working in this industry have arguably had a harder time, professionally, than folks in many other, even adjacent industries.

Smaller trucking companies and independent truckers in particular have had a rough two years: about 3,140 fleets of trucks shut down their businesses in the US in 2020 alone, and that's led to significant consolidation under fewer trucking companies, which has only compounded many of those other, aforementioned issues.

As of the day I'm recording this, the trucking industry is experiencing what industry experts are calling a whiplash, having gone from boasting a massive surplus of drivers to far too few in a very short period of time.

They've got 30% more jobs available, but not enough people to fill those jobs, and their application rate is falling precipitously, despite large sign-on bonuses and other perks.

What I'd like to talk about today is a recent series of protests led by truckers, which have come to symbolize many things beyond what the planners initially envisioned, and which seem primed to spread around the world, in various shapes, in the coming months.

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On January 15, 2022, a Canadian vaccine mandate came into effect for truckers crossing the border between the US and Canada.

More specifically, unvaccinated truckers who crossed into the US, and then wanted to return to their home in Canada, would need to show proof of a negative PCR test from within 72 hours of arriving at the border, and would then need to quarantine for two weeks.

Unvaccinated truckers from the US wouldn't be able to come into Canada, at all.

It was estimated, leading up to the official implementation of this mandate—which was actually just the ending of an exemption that was granted to truckers for a while, as all other Canadians in other jobs have had to adhere to these border-related vaccination standards all along—that somewhere between 12,000 to 16,000 Canadian truckers would be impacted by it, of the 120,000 or so drivers who work in the country; because those 12 to 16,000 drivers, which is something like 10% of the total Canadian trucker workforce, were not vaccinated against COVID-19.

It was estimated that another 10,000 American drivers would be likewise impacted, unable to cross the border unless they decided to get vaccinated; and it's estimated that only about 60% of US-based truckers are vaccinated compared to around 90% of Canadian truck drivers.

This Canadian mandate was matched by one that came into effect in the US a week after Canada's went live; since January 22, Canadian truckers have needed to provide proof of vaccination if they want to enter the US.

Many people have criticized these mandates for a variety of reasons, ranging from the argument that truckers are sitting alone in their trucks, driving up front and living in the back, much of the time they're working, so the risk of disease spread is fairly small, to the argument that some of the inflation we're seeing in North America—which then reverberates elsewhere around the world, to smaller degrees—is connected to this slowdown at the northern border, where fewer truckers are able to cross, and those that can cross do so more slowly because of vaccination checks, and thus it takes longer for less stuff to arrive on both sides.

It's like a mini-supply chain crisis sparked by a vaccine mandate that is targeting people who are unlikely to amplify the pandemic, according to some economists, trucking industry analysts, and primarily but not exclusively conservative editorialists.

On the same day that US reciprocal policy went into effect, January 22, a group of truckers in their vehicles formed into a convoy, which is basically like a caravan or other group of vehicles traveling in a flock or cluster, left British Columbia, traveled along the Trans-Canada Highway, and met up with other convoy groups from the Prairie and Atlantic provinces in the Canadian capital city, Ottawa.

There was also a standoff between truckers and law enforcement at the Canadian-US border in Alberta, which reportedly evolved from a peaceful protest into what the Mounties called an unlawful blockade of the border crossing.

The group that met up in Ottawa arrived at the capital on and around January 28, and on the 29th and 30th, which was a weekend, several thousand people protested around the city, shutting down major streets by parking their trucks and other vehicles in traffic lanes.

The next weekend, police estimate that somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 people protested again, with at this point around 1,000 vehicles clogging up the streets of Ottawa, and a core group of protest organizers having set up camp outside the Canadian parliament building.

In the following days, similar meetups and protests began to crop up in other cities around Canada, and in other parts of the world, as well. Most of these secondary events failed to generate much traction; in some cases because those who showed up shouted for a while and then left peaceably, in other cases because local law enforcement didn't hold back in the way they seem to have in Ottawa, so the protestors were rounded up or pushed away relatively quickly, before they could establish themselves and dig in for the long haul, and in other cases because the events were quickly appropriated by more fringe elements—folks who wanted to incite violence, damage local infrastructure, and/or support some other cause—which in turn sometimes led to the main group of truckers and their supporters bleeding off, no longer wanting to be associated with the louder and more violent groups that took over.

Now that said, there have been reports, in Canada and elsewhere—from New Zealand to cities across Europe—of protestors giving Nazi salutes, carrying swastikas and Confederate flags, waving signs with all sorts of racist, fascist, homophobic, anti-women, anti-Jew, anti-Muslim, anti-everything, really rhetoric on them, and in some cases attacking passersby, attempting to light nearby apartment buildings on fire, and generally harassing those who live and work in the area, especially folks who wear masks or who don't overtly support the protestor's messages.

As with any protest, especially those that are so politically and ideologically charged, there seem to have been people in attendance at many of these events who tried to incite violence or sway the energy of the crowd toward a different cause they believed in. So it's possible that at least some of these reported instances of violence and harassment haven't stemmed from the core group of protestors, but rather people who joined in because they wanted to cause some harm or spread an unpopular belief.

The core protestors, though, be they peaceful and non-harassy or not, kicked off these protests with the demand that the Canadian government drop their vaccine mandate, and that was followed by a demand that they drop all pandemic-related rules and mandates, and that the current government under Justin Trudeau resign.

Other convoy-aligned groups elsewhere made similar demands, though notably the demands have become more political and less practical in nature over time; and that shift from trucking-focused outcomes, which would allow unvaccinated truckers who want to cross the Canadian-US border for work purposes, to do so, eventually morphed into something closer to a demand that the whole government step down because they're corrupt and horrible.

Worth mentioning here is that, again, the US has a mandate as well, so if the Canadian government were to drop theirs, that wouldn't guarantee these truckers could go back to work as hoped. Also, and this was repeated to this group and to the nation over and over again, these mandates and rules are managed on a provincial level, which means any blame aimed at Trudeau and his administration is either based on ignorance, or some other collection of intentions and goals.

And that is part of the larger story here, because although, on its face, this is just a protest like any other protest—one that's maybe causing outsized economic damage because of the street-clogging capabilities of these big-rig trucks, and how they're able to essentially stop a lot of activity from happening across major thoroughfares in cities, and in some cases across bridges and borders—that's what is happening superficially, but there seems to be another layer of complexity here, and that may be part of why this concept of a Freedom Convoy is spreading around the world so rapidly.

Initial efforts by this group to fundraise on GoFundMe led to millions of dollars in donations, and GoFundMe released a million Canadian dollars worth of those donations to the group's organizers before dropping the group from their platform for violating their terms of service and returning about $10 million more Canadian dollars to about 120,000 donors.

Even more was raised shortly thereafter via a christian-branded copy of GoFundMe called GiveSendGo, and these funds—just as they were when gathered on GoFundMe, which is what led to them shutting the fundraising down on that platform, were questioned by the government, as many of the donations were anonymous and contained very large sums of money, which raised security hackles, as that's a common tactic for governments wanting surreptitiously support extremism in rival countries, or for extremist organizations to support their fellow travelers.

On February 13, GiveSendGo was hacked and the data it collected about this fundraising effort was leaked to journalists and researchers, who discovered that more than half, about 55.7% of donors were from the US (though it was closer to 63% for the original GoFundMe effort), and only 39% from Canada, and many of the American donors were ardent supporters of former US president Donald Trump; which makes sense, as quite a few US Republican commentators, like Dan Bongino and Ben Shapiro directed their followers to the fundraising effort, as did members of popular far-right 4chan groups, and white supremacist channels on Telegram.

And that gets to the roots of both some of the concern about these protests, and the root-system that seems to be lurking beneath them, possibly without many of the people involved in the protests even being aware of it.

The term "astroturfing" in this context refers to fake grassroots campaigns that are made to look like uprisings borne out of genuine feelings and realities, when in truth they're a spectacle meant to help generate attention and resources for other causes.

In this case, while there does seem to be an actual group of actual truckers who are mostly just pissed off that they can't work because they're unvaccinated, there's another groups underpinning them, supporting them, and funding them that seems to be made of up a cobbled-together collection of white supremacists, far-right activists, anti-vaccination groups, and Populist political organizations, especially but not exclusively operating in the United States; and they've been funneling money to the cause, while also paying protestors to fly and drive in from elsewhere, paying for fuel and food and other expenses, and generally making sure this thing gets bigger and lasts longer than it otherwise would have.

Many of the same people who helped Trump ascend to power in the US, then, are congregating around this cause, and though it's not known for certain whether they played a role in the initial genesis of the concept, or whether they simply saw something that might help them out and decided to amplify it, the outcome seems to be the same: the convoy has been commandeered, and while that's just fine for some of the original organizers, it's complicating things for others; like those who just wanted to get back to work rather than feeling excluded and limited for deciding not to get vaccinated.

There's a lot of hay to be made from aligning your causes with those of real-deal blue-collar workers, in other words, and pretty much everyone with something to flog, from an ideology to a candidate to a new crypto-asset seems to be throwing their lot in with these protests, and doing all they can to help it spread, which in turn will help create more opportunities to get press and bring in new supporters to all these other things.

And there are quite a few new convoys being planned around the world right now, with an especially big one scheduled to leave Southern California on March 4, with Washington DC as the intended destination, after a cross-country convoy tour—with scheduled stops along the way, to build up support and promote all those now-associated secondary causes.

We'll see how much longer this particular model of protest is able to sustain itself; with COVID-restrictions already softening or disappearing around the world as the post-Omicron wave seems to offer something of a respite from the worst of the pandemic, it may be that without mandates to rail against, the central body of supporters will drift away, or those who have appropriated this cause will push too far, too fast on their alternative talking points, which could also lead to a steep decline in support.

There's also a chance, though, this could end up rolling into a larger play for right-leaning and far-right politicians globally, many of who have elections coming up in the next year or two, and who thus might be able to ride this wave of populist sentiment to better-than-expected numbers. It's imaginable that a year or two from now, people won't even remember that the Freedom Convoy model began as a protest against vaccine mandates, and it will instead simply represent the newest iteration of populist politician fundraising strategies.

As of the day I'm recording this the US-Canada border has long since been cleared, and Ottawa has likewise been cleared of protestors after several weeks of their disruptive presence.

191 arrests were made in the final two days, as the last remaining protestors were removed from their posts by law enforcement who used pepper spray and stun grenades on some of the most die-hard attendees who refused to leave, even then. 76 vehicles were towed, under the auspices of emergency powers granted to the government in order to handle what was described as exceptional circumstances that required the use of said powers.

The government has said they will continue to look at evidence of wrongdoing by some of the protestors, who left before they could be arrested by who committed crimes while there, and locals continue, by a large majority, to say they are against the protestors and they're glad they're gone—it was reported earlier on that some of the protestors were confused to find that local Canadians didn't support them, because most of the news they were reading, and people they were listening to, told them the opposite—that they enjoyed widespread support across the country, but all surveys conducted by reputable outside sources say the opposite.

A bunch of bank and corporate accounts—206 as of the say I'm recording this—alongside a payment processor account holding nearly $3 million worth of funds, have been frozen using those same emergency powers—though it's expected, based on statements from those in charge of clearing out the protestors and emergency preparedness more generally, that the powers won't be needed much longer, and will be allowed to lapse.

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Show Notes

https://www.trucknews.com/transportation/canadas-truck-drivers-to-require-103-5-hours-of-training/1003136596/

https://www.marketplace.org/2021/01/25/long-haul-trucking-pandemic-kearsey-rothlander/

https://www.vox.com/22841783/truck-drivers-shortage-supply-chain-pandemic

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trucking-failures-surged-last-year-under-pandemic-11612827527

trucks.com/2021/08/26/truck-driver-recruiting-whiplash/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_driver%27s_license

http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/driver/truck-driver-licence.shtml

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/19/canada-freedom-convoy-protest/

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02671-0

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/phac-truck-vaccine-mandate-communications-error-1.6322988

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-vaccine-mandate-freight-drivers-coming-canada-may-exacerbate-auto-s-rcna12649

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/vaccine-mandate-now-in-effect-for-cross-border-truckers-re-entering-canada-1.5741845

https://cantruck.ca/arrivecan-alternatives-need-to-be-considered-to-avoid-potential-border-delays-cta/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-17/vaccine-rule-costs-major-canadian-trucking-firm-10-of-capacity

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/08/world/canada-trucker-protest

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_2022_New_Zealand

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/convoy-protest-vaccine-ottawa-1.6345889

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/09/u-s-trucker-convoy-to-washington-gathers-steam-00007135

https://globalnews.ca/news/8608963/paris-freedom-convoy-ottawa-trucker-protests/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22926134/canada-trucker-freedom-convoy-protest-ottawa

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadian-police-make-final-push-end-weeks-long-protest-capital-2022-02-20/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-convoy-protest-fourth-weekend-1.6358094

https://www.economist.com/leaders/justin-trudeaus-crackdown-on-protests-could-make-things-worse/21807707

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