• Biden’s cabinet secretaries Alejandro Mayorkas and Pete Buttigieg spoke with Canadian counterparts
  • White House is urging Justin Trudeau’s government to use its ‘federal powers’ to end the Freedom Convoy 
  • Canadian trucker protesting since mid-Jan against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate
  • International route drivers must be double jabbed, and 85 percent are, but the demonstrators oppose the rule
  • Since Monday at least three US-Canadian border bridges have been blocked in Ontario, Alberta and Manitoba
  • Ontario’s Ambassador Bridge, between Detroit and Windsor, is North America’s busiest international crossing
  • Ontario premier Doug Ford asked courts to freeze donations to truckers on a crowdfunding site GiveSendGo 
  • Trudeau said he spoke to officials, accused drivers of ‘hurting jobs, businesses, and our country’s economy’ 

 Joe Biden’s administration has urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to use its federal powers to end the Freedom Convoy demonstrations blockading key border crossings to protest Canada’s COVID-19 restrictions.

On Friday the blockade halting traffic at the Ambassador Bridge crossing connecting Windsor, Ontario to Detroit entered its fifth day, disrupting the flow products between the two countries and threatening to shut down production at several US auto plants.

The bridge, which connects Windsor, Ontario with Detroit, Michigan, is North America’s busiest international land border and usually carries more than $327million of goods per day on over 8,000 trucks, accommodating 27 percent of the approximately $400 billion in annual trade between Canada and the US.

The White House on Thursday said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spoke with their Canadian counterparts and urged them to help resolve the standoff. Details of the discussions were not immediately available.

Windsor mayor Drew Dilkens has stepped up calls for the use of force to end the blockades, telling CNN that if ‘the protesters don’t leave, there will have to be a path forward.’

‘If that means physically removing them, that means physically removing them, and we’re prepared to do that,’ he said.

Conservative Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who has called the protests an ‘occupation’, has reportedly authorized hefty fines, vehicle seizures, and the suspension of commercial licenses as tools to crack down on the protests.

Ford also moved to cut off funding for the protests by successfully asking a court to freeze $8.6 million in donations to the convoy through crowd-funding site GiveSendGo. The Christian fundraising site, based in the US, said in a statement that the Canadian court had no jurisdiction in the matter.

Canadian officials previously got GoFundMe to cut off funding after protest organizers used the site to raise about 10 million Canadian dollars ($7.8 million). GoFundMe determined that the fundraising effort violated the site’s terms of service due to unlawful activity.

Truck drivers, who have been in the city since the Freedom Convoy traveled to the nation’s capital on January 23, have since Monday blocked the Ambassador Bridge. Two other crossings, in Alberta and Manitoba, are also currently under protester blockade.

They are protesting Trudeau’s vaccine mandate, under which truckers driving international routes must be fully vaccinated, and though 85 percent of them are, many oppose the rules.