VANCOUVER — Four years on, the Freedom Convoy's legacy lingers. This January, Canada’s top court ruled the government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act to quell the protest, which froze accounts, denied protestors bail, and cleared peaceful activists with batons and rubber bullets, was unconstitutional and unjustified. Now, a new book by veteran trucker Gord Magill revives the debate: is Canada still waging a silent war on its truck drivers? And, if so, what does that mean for the rest of us?As Magill explained in an hour-long phone interview, trucking operates in a shared public space turning industry issues into matters of road safety for all Canadians. Canada's road safety challenges need little introduction. Fatal collisions involving commercial vehicles remain a persistent concern amplified in recent years and months by seemingly endless viral videos of horrific crashes in online feeds often featuring new immigrants wearing flip-flops and turbans..Amongst many other things, Magill's book examines the now commonly held belief an influx of foreign workers — through programs like the Temporary Foreign Worker initiative in Canada — contributes disproportionately to the risks we all face on our roads and highways. For the author, the matter is personal. Magill is a third-generation trucker with more than 25 years behind the wheel, from Nunavut's infamous ice roads to the Australian outback.He’s also a writer. His public profile grew significantly along with the Freedom Convoy, which he parlayed into a writing gig with Newsweek and then a January 2024 appearance on Tucker Carlson’s show where he discussed what became known as the Coutts trial. In that high-profile case, four Convoy-adjacent protesters endured lengthy pretrial custody on conspiracy-to-commit-murder charges before a jury acquitted some and others saw the charge, inexplicably, dropped entirely.Magill and I first connected while both covering the Coutts trial and that shared context provided the background for an hour-long conversation on his new book. In our conversation, he elaborated on the personal toll of industry changes, often with blunt anecdotes. "The job used to demand respect for the machine and the road," he told me. “Now it's treated like entry-level gig work, with predictable results.”Look no further than the case of Jaskirat Singh Sidhu and the Humboldt Broncos tragedy for an example of those tragic—but, in Magill's view, predictable—outcomes. The 2018 crash, caused by Sidhu's failure to stop at a key intersection after minimal training, appears no less than a dozen times in the book—a sobering reminder of its profound impact on Canada's public opinion of the trucking industry..Recent coverage of Sidhu's fight against deportation has reignited debates over training gaps and accountability. "None of this would be happening if [we had] a graduated licensing system," Magill said, arguing Humboldt and similar crashes "would never have happened" under stricter, progressive training like in New Zealand or Australia.Magill traces the industry's woes back decades, criticizing the deregulation paradox: Canada's Motor Carrier Act equivalent followed U.S. reforms in 1980. The trucking industry in the 1970s was heavily regulated," he explained, noting reformers correctly identified the need for change under the U.S. Motor Carrier Act of 1980 and Canada's parallel reforms a few years later. "They demanded free market reforms, they got them, and then they demanded the government help them with the results of those reforms."Intense competition and rate-cutting followed, pushing skilled drivers out and creating what he calls a retention crisis mislabeled a "shortage." Rather than genuine market adjustments, companies turned to "corporate welfare" — subsidized training schools and now mass insourcing via the Temporary Foreign Worker program — to keep costs down. This, he argues, sustains the silent assault on the profession by treating drivers as disposable, eroding standards and turning trucking into precarious labor..Exploitation extends to the workers themselves, as well. Many from India like Sidhu are drawn, or pushed, into the industry through misleading promises and debt traps. "I don't think they're attracted to trucking," Magill said. "I think they're forced into it in many ways." Magill pointed to Narendra Modi's policies encouraging emigration for remittances boosting GDP, combined with Canada's "completely parasitized" TFW system: recruiters charging illegal upfront fees, fake colleges leading to scams, and employers holding visas over heads like "indentured servants."
