First of all I feel I should start by saying that the Ottawa protests are not about truckers.

https://www.trucknews.com/blogs/the-so-called-freedom-convoy...

The protests are disavowed by the Canadian Trucking Alliance and 90% of truckers are vaccinated and are exempt from the quarantine rules. Instead, the protest organizers are western separatists with their own agendas. This is their protest and the are using the Trucking industry as a tool in their PR. The very fact that we are discussing truckers now here on HN has more to do with their PR campaign than trucker well-being.

https://cantruck.ca/statement-by-canadian-trucking-alliance-...

Secondly, Canada's ending of the exemption for truckers from quarantine rules is reciprocal with the US rules. Canada unilaterally reinstating the quarantine exemption for cross-border truckers does approximately nothing to help unvaccinated cross-border truckers because they are still subject to the US rules regarding vaccination status when entering back into the United States. Again, this just goes to show that the protests in Ottawa have nothing to do with actual cross-border trucking. It would require international cooperation to actually address the alleged issue at hand.

Now, with regards to the matter of whether truckers traveling alone are the cause of the hospitals being full: The Omicron variant didn't originate in Canada. The virus was imported into the country from outside through a human vessel and was only able to establish itself in the country due to a violation of quarantine. No doubt the Omicron variant entered the country multiple times through multiple carriers.

Probably some of these carriers were subject to quarantine rules and violated the rules. Possibly some of these carriers were exempt from quarantine rules to begin with. But as a matter of fact, the reason the hospitals are full is because some people came into the country and didn't adequately quarantine, regardless of whether they were required to or if they were exempt.

Now, I do get it. Canada is not New Zealand. Our COVID border protections are a sieve. There was no way Omicron was ever going to be kept out of Canada. But just because our border protections are a sieve, isn't reason to eliminate them. Our goal here is not to prevent COVID from existing in Canada. Our goal is to spread out when people get sick over time so the people who will require hospital services don't all require it simultaneously. And it is plausible that our sieve can help in that regards.

When Omicron first enters Canada, it will spread more slowly if the "seeds" we are importing are spread out over time. The fewer seeds that are planted, and the more time in between them, both spreads out when people fall ill and gives more time to administer booster shots to the most at risk people.

With that all said, Omicron is now firmly planted in Canada. Whether cross-border travelers of any kind import Omicron basically makes no difference. So, as long as COVID doesn't mutate to move from the the second most contagious virus known to the most contagious virus known or otherwise escape immunity, the border policy isn't really effective at doing anything anymore. From my armchair it seems very unlikely that COVID has room to grow more contagious. But I also felt the same thing about Delta, so WTF do I know.

Therefore, I defer to those who hopefully know more than I do. If government advisors say, "hey, this COVID thing is well past its peak. Border policy is no longer doing anything meaningful. There is no longer any point in keeping it." then I'll be on board with that. If government advisors say, "so long as COVID continues to run its mutation experiments in millions of human shaped petri dishes across the globe, we will continue to keep our COVID border sieve in place." then I'm on board with that too. And if that means 10% less cross-border trucking capacity, then I'm okay with that too.