After more than 24 hours, he and a group of other South Asian Canadian truckers approached authorities to find out when they could pass.“That’s when another guy, he came out of his truck and he was, like, being racist.
He was saying, ‘Go back to your truck, go back to India,”’ recalled Singh, a 28-year-old driver from Edmonton.Disturbed, he and his co-driver set out for another crossing — an option unavailable to some, since oversize loads can only move through certain checkpoints — on a route that added more than 500 kilometres to their trip.
The delay meant they missed their next load, costing them a week of work — nearly $6,000 between the two of them.Singh is now mulling an exit from the long-haul industry.
Frustration and disgust at the recent blockades and encampment in Ottawa may be the final straw atop concerns ranging from wages to road safety, social isolation and exhausting working conditions.“I’ve been having really bad experiences in the last few months,” he said.If Singh and others are driven away, they’ll be leaving a field already desperately short of labour.The trucker job vacancy rate hit a historic high of nearly 23,000 in the third quarter of 2021, according to figures from Statistics Canada.