Windsor, Ontario, Mayor Drew Dilkens said Thursday the trucker convoy protests blocking the flow of traffic on the Ambassador Bridge linking his city across the border to neighboring Detroit are hurting his city and the country, and he is ready to "physically" remove them.
"If the protesters don't leave, there will have to be a path forward," Dilkens told CNN's Kate Bolduan. "If that means physically removing them, then we're prepared to do that."
Windsor is the auto capital of Canada, Dilkens added, and the supply chain on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border is "tightly integrated."
The blockade by truckers protesting Canada's COVID-19 mandates entered its fourth day Thursday at the Ambassador Bridge and has forced Ford, Toyota, and General Motors to either shut down plants or curtail production on both sides of the border.
When the border is closed, that affects delivery schedules, creating an "immediate reaction at plants on both sides of the border," said Dilkens.
Under normal circumstances, "we're talking 8,000 to 10,000 trucks a day" that cross the Ambassador Bridge, said Dilkens, of the structure, which is the busiest U.S.-Canadian border crossing and carries 25% of all trade between the two countries.
"In terms of dollars and cents, we're talking about $400 million per day that crosses at this location," said Dilkens, and economies on both sides of the border "cannot handle this type of impact" much longer.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has called on Canadian authorities to reopen traffic on the bridge, as the ongoing closures are harming her state's economy, not only in the automotive sector but also in agriculture and manufacturing.
Dilkens further told CNN that there is a threat of violence in the demonstrations and that some police have seen protesters holding tire irons when they come out of their trucks.
"You have people on the ground so committed to this protest that they have expressed themselves and said they're willing to die for this particular protest, so that amps up the temperature on the ground in a different way that requires a different police response," Dilkens said.
The police, helped by officers from other cities, are trying to negotiate, but Dilkens said the protesters are a "leaderless group" and their demands are "not unified," as they are not only protesting about vaccine mandates but other issues like climate change initiatives.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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