Single lanes have reopened in each direction at Alberta’s busiest Canada-U.S. trade window, allowing cross-border supply chains to resume, RCMP report.
In response to “concerned citizens in the area of Coutts,” participants in a blockade of vehicles in place at the local border crossing “made the decision to open a lane going northbound and southbound on Highway 4 near the Coutts border,” Alberta RCMP said in a statement Wednesday afternoon.
The passage “allows for area residents to have freedom of movement, school bussing that was impacted to be reinstated, emergency services to provide full services, border access and the flow of goods and services to resume,” RCMP said.
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Alberta RCMP “acknowledges the work that is being done,” and noted they have been “actively engaging with participants of the blockade” since the weekend to re-open lanes of traffic.
However, the Mounties said they “remain on scene and our efforts continue to be focused on fully reopening services.”
As of 7 p.m. MT Wednesday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s website, providing the wait times at Canada-U.S. land crossings, listed its facility opposite Coutts at Sweetgrass, Montana as having no delay at that time, but an average wait time of 12 minutes.
As of 6 p.m. MT, the Canada Border Services Agency still listed the wait time at its Coutts facility as seven hours, both for commercial and non-commercial vehicle traffic.
The Mounties said Tuesday on Twitter they were also “aware of other blockades that have appeared in the immediate surrounding area of the Coutts border crossing,” adding those sites “will be monitored with the full support of other Alberta law enforcement partners.”
The Canada-U.S. border crossing at Coutts, about 100 km southeast of Lethbridge, is the province’s only 24-hour land crossing into Montana.
RCMP had said Tuesday they would begin enforcement at the blockade to allow traffic to resume, but appeared to be stymied by the arrival of farm tractors and other vehicles setting up new blockades.
The protest at Coutts was mounted in tandem with a demonstration still underway in Ottawa concerning current federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates for cross-border truckers, among other grievances related to pandemic-related public health policy and federal politics.
Canada’s rules for cross-border travel by truckers and other essential workers were updated effective Jan. 15. Those rules now require any Canadian truckers and other essential workers who are unvaccinated against COVID-19 and returning to Canada to follow the same quarantine protocols as other unvaccinated Canadians returning to Canada. Unvaccinated foreign truckers attempting to enter Canada would be turned away.
The U.S. government has had the same rules in place for foreign unvaccinated truckers since Jan. 22, effectively prohibiting unvaccinated Canadian truckers from bringing freight into the United States. — Glacier FarmMedia Network
