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Mayor of Windsor, Ontario. seemed puzzled. On Wednesday, he announced his official request for police reinforcements from the federal and provincial governments to help manage the blockade of the Ambassador Bridge. The plan, he said, was to reach a peaceful resolution with protesters who closed a crucial trade crossing into the United States, although he was unsure exactly how that would happen.

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“You’re dealing with a somewhat leaderless group,” Mayor Drew Dilkens said during a midday news conference with the city’s police chief. “It’s not like there’s just one person to go to to try and find a solution.”

Authorities have come under pressure to clear the protest and restore the flow of trucks between Windsor and Detroit – a border that the mayor says accounts for about a third of surface trade between Canada and the United States, with around 400 million dollars worth of goods crossing daily.

Bank of Canada Tiff Macklem has joined a chorus of leaders pushing for an end to the blockades, warning that protests in commercial thoroughfares in western Ontario, as well as similar actions in Alberta, could have a “measurable” impact on economic activity if they don’t end soon.

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“We don’t need this,” he told reporters on Wednesday, after speaking at a virtual conference hosted by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. The chamber leads a coalition of more than 70 business groups calling on municipal, provincial and federal governments to eliminate protests.

For Mayor Dilkens, however, it is not so easy. “It may be gratifying for some to see the forced withdrawal of protesters,” he said, but such aggressive tactics risk escalating the situation and prompting more people to come out in support of the protesters. On Wednesday morning, police estimated the size of the protest at around 100 people, plus 50 to 75 vehicles.

“You try to have a rational conversation and not everyone on the ground is a rational actor,” Dilkens said. “I heard you want this to end and you want these people to go. And so do we. So please allow us to reasonably work through this so no one gets hurt.

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If this process continues into next week, trucking delays could impact production in key local industries, including auto manufacturing and food production. Nearby Leamington, Canada’s greenhouse capital, grows more than domestic market demand and ships about 80% of its cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes to the United States.

Michael Graydon, CEO of Food, Health and Consumer Products of Canada, said domestic food makers rely heavily on U.S. suppliers for the ingredients and packaging they use to make their products. Factories were already running out of these inputs because their suppliers were struggling with labor shortages and production disruptions during the Omicron wave.

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Most manufacturers will have enough inputs for the next few days, Graydon said. If the blockade extends into next week, however, “some of our members will in fact probably have to close.”

About 25% of Canada’s food and consumer products cross the Ambassador Bridge from the United States, and a prolonged blockade could lead to “reduced shelf availability and increased prices for many products such as fruits and vegetables”, according to the Retail Council of Canada. spokesperson Michelle Wasylyshen.

The blockade comes at a fragile time in the global supply chain, already stretched beyond its limits by a long series of weather and pandemic-related complications, from Omicron-fueled labor shortages to catastrophic flooding in British Columbia late last year.

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Importers responsible for Canada’s winter supply of fruits and vegetables are struggling to find enough ships and trucks to transport produce from warmer growing regions, most of which eventually crosses the US border.

“I’m going crazy. I’m going crazy,” said Sandro Saragiotto, president of Toronto-based transportation company Offshore Canada Logistics Inc., which focuses on perishables. “That’s not right.”

The Ambassador Bridge closure has added up to 24 hours to the time it takes to cross the border, on average, as trucks try to find alternate routes, according to Ron Lemaire, who heads the Canadian Marketing Association. fruits and vegetables (ACPM). At this point, 24 hours can mean the difference between salable and rotten, as shipments of fresh fruits and vegetables have already been delayed due to supply chain issues.

At the Summerhill Market chain of four high-end grocery stores in Toronto, Vice President Christy McMullen had seen no impact from the lockdown. But it was preparing for it on Wednesday, expecting some of its suppliers to be behind on shipments. This would lead to what she called “holes” on the shelves, the kind of rolling breakdowns where products are gone one day, but come back another.

“It’s coming,” she said.

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