A New Trucker Blockade in Canada Threatens Supply Chain for Carmakers

A blockade at the busiest route linking Canada to the United States is further snarling global supply chains, leading to production stoppages and other difficulties for automakers and other manufacturers with dwindling inventories.

Automakers, who have already been suffering from a global shortage of semiconductors needed to power their cars, are being particularly affected by the partial shutdown of the Ambassador Bridge, which links Detroit, Mich., with Windsor, Ontario, and accounts for roughly a quarter of trade between the two countries.

Ford Motor Company said it had shut down two Canadian plants and reduced production at another as of Wednesday afternoon. Toyota Motor Corporation and Honda Motor Company would likely be closing some production lines later on Wednesday because of border closures, said David Adams, the president at Global Automakers of Canada, which represents both companies.

Mr. Adams declined to specify which plants would be affected, but said Toyota and Honda together had six different facilities in the vicinity that depend on shipments across the bridge. Thousands of trucks cross the bridge daily, ferrying auto parts between major vehicle plants.

“It’s pivotal, certainly, to the automotive industry,” Mr. Adams said.

Both Toyota and Honda operate on just-in-time supply chains that deliver parts to factories as they are needed, giving them enough inventory to operate for about two days without new deliveries before production lines need to slow, he said. Protests over Canadian vaccine mandates began partially blocking off traffic over the Ambassador Bridge on Monday night.

In a statement Wednesday afternoon, Shane Wark, the assistant to the national president at Unifor, which represents Canadian autoworkers, said the protests at the border continued to disrupt work at Unifor-represented auto plants, resulting in short-term layoffs at a Ford engine plant in Windsor, a Ford assembly plant in Oakville, near Toronto, and the Windsor assembly plant of Stellantis, the company that owns Fiat Chrysler.

“The situation is fluid, and changing by the hour,” he said.

“These blockades are creating added hardship on Unifor members and their families in the auto sector, following two years of extraordinary production and supply chain disruptions, and must come to an end immediately,” he added.

In a statement, a Ford spokesperson, Said Deep, said the interruption hurt “customers, autoworkers, suppliers, communities and companies on both sides of the border that are already two years into parts shortages resulting from the global semiconductor issue, Covid and more.”

“While we continue to ship our current engine inventory to support our U.S. plants, we are running our plants at a reduced schedule today in Oakville, and our Windsor engine plant is down,” Mr. Deep added.

In a briefing Wednesday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said that the blockade posed a risk to auto industry supply chains, and that the administration was also tracking potential disruptions to agricultural exports from Michigan into Canada.

Biden administration officials were in close contact with customs agents, officials in Canada and Michigan, and industry stakeholders to speed traffic and monitor the impact on supply chains, she said.

“We’re working to ensure there’s movement,” Ms. Psaki said.

“I think it’s important for everyone in Canada and the United States to understand what the impact of this blockage is — potential impact — on workers, on the supply chain, and that is where we are most focused,” she added.

Companies have been looking at alternative crossing routes, like the Blue Water Bridge, which links Port Huron, Mich., and Sarnia, Ontario, to ferry their supplies. But a new blockade on a route to that bridge, as well as a surge of diverted cars and trucks, slowed traffic there as well.

Matt Blunt, the president of the American Automotive Policy Council, which represents Chrysler, Ford Motor Company and General Motors, said the protests had already resulted in lost production.

Mr. Blunt said his group had encouraged the Biden administration to reach out to Canadian counterparts. The Biden administration and customs officials appeared to be doing everything they could from the U.S. side to facilitate as much commerce as possible, he said.

“At some point, if there’s no entry or exit from Canada, there’s not much that can be done,” Mr. Blunt said. “Every day that this shutdown or slowdown persists, it’s going to have an impact on U.S. and Canadian production.”

A new trucker blockade protesting pandemic restrictions snarled traffic at a third point along the Canadian and the United States border on Wednesday, putting more pressure on the automotive industry, which depends on the seamless movement of parts and components between the countries.

A barricade of trucks in Sarnia, Ontario, stalled traffic traveling on the only expressway route to a bridge into the United States that connected Sarnia and Port Huron, Mich.

That bridge was already swamped on Wednesday with traffic from the United States after it became the only alternative route to the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, which was shut down in the Canada-bound direction on Monday after protesters erected a road blockade.

On Wednesday, Drew Dilkens, Windsor’s mayor, said he would ask the federal government for assistance in dealing with the blockade in Windsor.

Because of parts supply issues related to the problems with the Sarnia bridge, the Stellantis minivan assembly plant in Windsor was forced to cut two shifts short Tuesday, said LouAnn Gosselin, a spokeswoman for the company. Production resumed Wednesday morning, she said, and the company was working with parts suppliers to prevent further shutdowns.

Truck protesters on Wednesday were also still interfering with another border crossing between the Western province of Alberta and Montana.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, Duty Inspector Michael Williams of the Toronto Police Service said Wednesday afternoon that police had implemented road closures in the downtown area ahead of a possible truck convoy after seeing concerning social media posts that protests were heading to Toronto. On Wednesday morning, police blocked off roads surrounding the provincial legislature building, repeating precautions they took ahead of protests last weekend.

“We will scale our operations up” if necessary, he said.

The three blockades and the prospect of another convoy disturbing Toronto, Canada’s largest city and financial capital, came as the demonstrations in Ottawa — by loosely organized groups of truck drivers and protesters opposed to vaccination requirements for truckers crossing into Canada from the United States — continued to echo globally. In France, dozens of trucks and vehicles left the south of the country for Paris to vent their anger over their country’s vaccination policies.

The protests have also inspired copycat convoys in New Zealand and Australia. And there are talks of another in the works in the United States.

Far-right and anti-vaccine groups around the world have amplified the message of the Canadian protesters on social media, raising millions of dollars in online campaigns.

The main Facebook group for the French demonstrators has attracted more than 320,000 followers in just a few days. The movement calls itself “Convoi de la Liberté,” a direct translation of “Freedom Convoy,” the slogan for the Canadian movement.

In Ottawa, during a raucous session of Question Period on Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau faced a barrage of criticism from opposition politicians, including the contention that he wanted to keep Canada in a state of permanent pandemic, and that he was watching passively as the protests undermined Canada’s image on the global stage.

Mr. Trudeau was resolute, noting that during the last federal elections in September, in which he was re-elected, Canadians had shown clearly that they supported a party that was in favor of vaccination mandates.

He called again for the protests to end. “We are calling for an end to the barricades,” he said.

In Ottawa, life continued to be disrupted by the presence of more than 400 trucks blocking roads. Residents got some relief on Tuesday night when the drivers of the trucks for the second night refrained from blasting their air horns, a form of protest that was enjoined by a court order on Monday afternoon.

Although most Canadians support the public health measures that Canada has taken to combat the pandemic, the truck protesters have nonetheless tapped into fatigue with pandemic restrictions.

On Tuesday, Scott Moe, the conservative premier of Saskatchewan, who has voiced support for the protesters, announced that the province would end vaccination and testing requirements on Feb. 14. Indoor mask requirements will continue until the end of the month.

In Alberta, Premier Jason Kenney announced that the province’s vaccine passport program would end as of Wednesday, and that mask mandates in schools would be lifted next week.

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Windsor Mayor Requests Help to Manage Bridge Protesters

Drew Dilkens, the mayor of Windsor, Ontario, requested additional resources and personnel from Canada’s provincial and federal governments to deal with a protest by truckers on the Ambassador Bridge.

I’m concerned about the health, I’m concerned about the safety of our local residents. And to date, these demonstrations and this protest have been, by and large, peaceful and without incident. And I want to commend the men and women of the Windsor Police Service for all that they have done to de-escalate where required, and to maintain security on site. In the past 24 hours, we have spoken with officials at both the provincial and federal governments, and here we are formally requesting additional resources. While we are hopeful the situation can be resolved in the near-term, we need to plan for a protracted protest, and have requested additional personnel to be deployed to Windsor to support our hard-working members of the police service. We are striving to resolve this issue safely and peacefully. My office has already received numerous complaints and calls from local residents and business owners advocating for the demonstrators to be forcibly removed. And while it may be gratifying for some to see the forced removal of the demonstrators, such action may inflame the situation, and certainly cause more folks to come here and add to the protest, and we don’t want to risk additional conflict.

Most Canadian trucking groups have condemned the convoys and blockades, and said that more than 90 percent of drivers were vaccinated. Despite protesters’ claims that the mandatory vaccination of truckers would lead to border disruptions and supply shortages, the Canadian government said that it has not seen any change in truck traffic on its border.

Ottawa’s police chief, who declared a state of emergency on Sunday, has vowed to end the protests but has said the city needs 1,800 more officers to do that. Mr. Trudeau said on Twitter that hundreds of Royal Canadian Mounted Police had been mobilized to support Ottawa police officers, and promised that the Canadian government and city would employ “whatever resources are needed to get the situation under control.”

He is an ambitious 34-year-old lawyer, an adept debater who was brought up by a single mother in Quebec City and has been seen in his native province as a rising star in Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party.

But, as the trucker occupation enters its second week in the national capital, Joël Lightbound, a Liberal Member of Parliament from Quebec City, has catapulted onto the national stage as a loud dissenter, after breaking ranks with Mr. Trudeau by railing against the prime minister over his pandemic policies.

The prime minister, Mr. Lightbound warned in a news conference in Ottawa on Tuesday, was politicizing the pandemic and demonizing those who dared to disagree with him.

“I can’t help but notice with regret that both the tone and the policies of my government have changed drastically since the last election campaign,” he said, speaking in front of a row of Canadian flags. “It went from a more positive approach to one that stigmatizes and divides people.”

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A young backbencher breaching the party line with a public airing of grievances during a national crisis is highly unusual in Canadian politics, and Mr. Lightbound’s political future in his party is now in doubt. Mr. Lightbound on Tuesday resigned his position as the chairman of the Liberal Party’s Quebec caucus, citing “disagreements with government policy.” His outburst was expected to be discussed at the Liberal Caucus meeting on Wednesday.

In his public revolt, Mr. Lightbound has also become a perhaps unlikely emblem of pandemic exhaustion in Canada, while giving ammunition to the truck protesters opposed to vaccine mandates and to Mr. Trudeau’s critics. Those critics include the opposition Conservatives, whose perspective he appeared to be echoing on Tuesday.

Even as his words helped provide a lift to the protesters, Mr. Lightbound urged them to end their occupation.

“It’s time to stop the occupation,” he said. “It’s time for truckers to leave.”

He also distanced himself from the racism displayed among some of the protesters.

The young politician’s intervention has underlined the fact that Mr. Trudeau faces some dissent, even in his own ranks, over his handling of the pandemic at a time when many Canadians are fed up with the feeling that their lives are being truncated.

Mr. Trudeau has repeatedly affirmed his support for vaccine mandates, and has steadfastly refused to negotiate with the protesters or to alter his policies.

“We’re all frustrated,” he said on Tuesday, even as he stressed that the government’s policy on vaccine mandates would remain. “We’re all sick and tired of restrictions, of mandates. It’s been two years and it’s really, really tiring for all of us.”

During his news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Lightbound, a former parliamentary secretary to the minister of finance, urged Mr. Trudeau to rethink his approach to the pandemic, noting that Canadians had been enduring some of the toughest restrictions among developed economies, even as other countries like Britain had opened up.

He called on Mr. Trudeau come up with a “road map” to ease some restrictions and to rethink the mandates, noting that there were other factors at stake.

“A population’s health, it’s kind of like a pie and Omicron is but a slice of that pie,” he said, referring to the latest variant of the coronavirus. “Economic health, social health and mental health must also be accounted for.”

While the protests in Ottawa have, at times, been co-opted by a far-right fringe, the demonstrations in Canada’s capital have also tapped into widespread frustration with pandemic restrictions that have been among the toughest in the developed world.

Stuck at home for weeks on end, unable to go to restaurants, places of worship or gyms, Canadians in provinces like Quebec and Ontario have looked jealously across the border at Americans living with fewer constraints. The speedy rollout of the U.S. immunization campaign also produced vaccine envy in Canada.

As many countries around the world are easing restrictions, a majority of Canadian provincial governments, which are responsible for administering health care, have, until recently, maintained restrictions imposed earlier this winter, as Omicron surged and hospitals became overstretched.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has imposed vaccination mandates for federal public servants and workers in the airline and railway industries.

In late December in Quebec, the government imposed a 10 p.m. curfew — even on New Year’s Eve. The move, which provoked an angry backlash, was accompanied by a ban on private indoor gatherings beyond members of the same household.

Until the curfew was lifted in mid-January, Quebecers were required to remain indoors from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., and those who broke the rules faced fines as high as $4,750.

Bars, restaurants and gyms were also shuttered in December, and the restrictions have only recently been eased, with restaurants allowed to open at 50 percent capacity, gyms opening at partial capacity next week and bars allowed to reopen at full capacity on March 14.

The police patrolling the sleepy city of Sherbrooke, Quebec, last year observed an unlikely curfew violation: a woman “walking” her boyfriend, attached to a leash, as he padded along the sidewalk on all fours. She said she was merely taking her dog for a walk. After all, dog-walking close to home is one of several activities, along with trips to the pharmacy, exempt from the curfew.

The police, unconvinced, slapped the couple with a total of nearly $3,100 in fines.

Close to 34,700 Canadians have died from Covid-19, with the highest death rate per 100,000 people in Quebec, according to federal public health data.

Atlantic Canada managed to stave off virus spread by imposing inter-provincial travel requirements.

In Ontario, the government has called states of emergency to control virus spread at various points during the pandemic. Last April, before Canada was able to ramp up its vaccination rollout, the provincial government of Premier Doug Ford expanded police powers to enforce Covid-19 orders, which included outdoor gatherings limited to one household. It also banned the use of playgrounds, but public outcry led it to swiftly reverse the decision.

Some people in Ontario’s long-term care homes, among the hardest hit during the pandemic, spent the better part of a year indoors.

This week, the premiers of Saskatchewan and Alberta said their provinces would be lifting some public health restrictions, including indoor mask requirements and proof of vaccination requirements.

More than 78 percent of Canadians are fully vaccinated, and 84 percent of the population has received at least one dose.

Dozens of trucks and vehicles left southern France on Wednesday and headed for Paris as part of a convoy opposing the country’s vaccination pass program, a direct reverberation of the trucker-led protests that have engulfed Canada’s capital for nearly two weeks.

The demonstrators in France, who include motorcyclists and car drivers, are expected to be followed by similar convoys on Thursday and Friday. The movement’s name, the “Convoi de la Liberté,” is a direct translation of Canada’s “Freedom Convoy.”

The French protest was the latest reflection of how the demonstrations in Canada have captured the imaginations of far-right and anti-vaccine groups around the world, which have used social media to call for copycat gatherings in several countries including Australia, New Zealand and the United States.

Although the scale of the French protest remains unclear at this stage, the main Facebook group behind the movement has attracted more than 300,000 followers in just a few days. On Wednesday, members began posting images of protesters driving out of Nice, on the French Riviera, or packing food in advance of their journeys.

In a 25,000-member group on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app, people posted detailed maps for drivers to reach Paris, including meeting points along the way.

Protesters are expected to converge on the French capital on Friday, and some have called for people to continue on to Brussels, the headquarters for most European Union institutions.

Supporters of the movement describe themselves as opponents of France’s vaccine pass, a health passport that was introduced earlier this year and prevents people who are unvaccinated against Covid-19 from going to restaurants, theaters, cinemas and other venues.

Only about 8 percent of France’s adult population is unvaccinated, and opposition to the pass has been limited, but occasionally intense. Last summer, France experienced widespread, weekslong protests against new health pass policies.

Gabriel Attal, the French government’s spokesman, said on Wednesday that the vaccine pass would be removed “as soon as there is a normalization of the situation in the hospitals,” which health authorities said could happen this spring. Mr. Attal said that the country was seeing the “beginning of improvement,” with a 35 percent decrease in new coronavirus cases reported over the last seven days.

France’s Freedom Convoy has attracted the support of some of the country’s political opposition in France, particularly among far-right and far-left groups.

Marine Le Pen, the candidate of the far-right National Rally in presidential elections scheduled for April, said that she sympathized with the movement. She compared it to the Yellow Vests, a 2018 grass-roots movement that started as a protest against rising gas prices before spreading to include a wide array of anti-government grievances.

In anticipation of Ontario lifting its ban on in-person dining at the end of January, Joe Thottungal brought in an extra large order of meat and produce for the reopening of Thali, his Indian restaurant in downtown Ottawa, and called his staff back to work.

But the day after most of his highly perishable inventory arrived, the trucker convoy that has paralyzed his section of Ottawa rolled into town. While the street in front of Mr. Thottungal’s restaurant is truck-free, which allows him to remain open, his once-busy restaurant is practically empty.

The truckers, for the most part, are eating at impromptu canteens and barbecues dotted along the streets. Mr. Thottungal is enforcing provincial proof-of-vaccination rules for his diners, something the protesters refuse to provide. Mr. Thottungal’s regular clientele is staying away, either out of fear of harassment from protesters or because roadblocks and police road closures have made Thali inaccessible to anyone unwilling or unable to walk several blocks.

On Monday night, seven of his employees cooked and served five customers. For Valentine’s Day, he has six reservations, down from about 90 bookings.

“This is a G7 capital and it’s under siege — come on,” he said during lunch on Tuesday, when only three customers were eating. “Can anybody in the government tell us when this downtown will be normal? Nobody’s saying, so how do you plan?”

Before the meat and produce spoiled, Mr. Thottungal used the surplus to make dinners for a women’s shelter and a homeless shelter.

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Closer to Parliament, reopening the Metropolitain Brasserie has been impossible for Sarah Chown, the restaurant’s managing partner. The major intersection where it sits has been fully occupied for nearly two weeks by heavy trucks, S.U.V.s and pickups. Last weekend, a D.J. turned the corner into a dance floor. Several of the truckers attempted to keep time with the beats using their air horns.

On the first day of the protest, the restaurant was limited to offering takeout. But the unbearable noise and out-of-control crowd quickly shut even that down. Metropolitain, which has 220 seats and 55 employees, has yet to reopen. The liquor and wine bottles behind its sweeping zinc-topped bar have been taken down and locked away, out of fears of break-ins. After traversing police blockades, Ms. Chown has arrived some mornings to find human feces on the restaurant’s patio.

“I feel like I’m being held hostage in my own city,” Ms. Chown said in the darkened and empty interior on Tuesday, adding that protesters weren’t harming the policymakers they wanted to pressure.

“The people that are suffering are small-business owners, the employees and the residents. I don’t understand how they can’t see that.”

Plans for a demonstration by truckers in the United States similar to the one in Canada appear to be gaining momentum, aided by online supporters.

The route and timing of the demonstration, meant to protest pandemic restrictions in the United States, was set to be announced on Tuesday evening, said Brian Brase, a trucker who is organizing the American effort. According to messages posted on social media, the route may start in Sacramento, Calif., and end in Washington, D.C., but Mr. Brase declined to comment on details of the convoy until an official announcement was made.

It is unclear how large any such convoy might be, should it come to pass. But anti-vaccine activists have started planning on popular forums on Facebook and Telegram, the messaging app.

On Facebook, the hashtag #TruckersConvoy2022 has garnered almost 2 million interactions over the last two weeks, according to CrowdTangle, a data analytics tool owned by Meta, Facebook’s parent company. Private Facebook groups dedicated to the convoy have also seen fast growth, with the main group collecting nearly 150,000 members since it started two weeks ago. A second group, dedicated to the efforts in the United States, has gained 50,000 members in the last week.

Meta said it had removed several groups associated with the convoy for violating its rules, and was continuing to monitor the situation. One group had sent people to external sites to buy merchandise. Another group had violated Facebook’s rules by sharing content tied to the banned QAnon conspiracy movement.

Over the last two weeks, the activists have shifted from calling for supplies to be sent to Canada, to trying to mobilize and support a convoy of truckers in the United States, according to social media conversations viewed by The Times.

Anti-vaccine activists have formed dozens of Telegram chat groups in each state, with many dedicated to specific counties. Members of those groups are trying to build local support and gather supplies for the truckers as they pass through.

On Telegram, one California-based group began discussing how to stock food and other supplies for truckers participating. One person offered their property just south of Sacramento as a base, or launching point for the truckers to gather.

“It’s time for us to fight this war the enemy has declared,” the person wrote, underneath a post that suggested that the trucker’s convoy in the United States could disrupt everything from postal routes to the supply chain that delivers food to supermarkets.

Wrote another member of the group: “Brace yourselves, let’s make this big enough so every American feels it.”

Mr. Brase, a third-generation trucker who organizes an annual event called Ten Four D.C. that brings big rigs to Washington, said in an interview with The New York Times that the U.S. convoy was meant to show support for American health care workers, police and military personnel who are facing vaccine mandates.

“The convoy is for everyone,” he said, “and to support the loved ones of truckers while we are on the road.”

Police officers were swarmed by protesters in Ottawa Monday, though none were badly injured, Steve Bell, Ottawa’s deputy police chief, said during a news conference on Tuesday.

The episode took place as officers were seizing canisters of fuel being delivered to the encampments where protesters’ trucks have been occupying the capital city for 12 days, with support and aid from sources far beyond the capital city.

More than 400 hulked trucks remain parked in the middle of streets around downtown Ottawa, including right across from the country’s Parliament buildings, Mr. Bell said. He described participants as “highly determined and volatile.”

The police have said most of the investigations underway are for charges related to mischief, theft, hate crimes and property damage.

The force has asked for 1,800 more police officers, which would more than double its current size.

To date, the police have made 22 arrests, issued more than 1,300 tickets and opened 79 criminal investigations, Mr. Bell said. Police officials across the border in Ohio also made an arrest after Canadian and American police worked together to trace “fake threats designed to deceive and distract our emergency resources,” Mr. Bell said.

The police have come under fire from Ottawa residents, many of whom feel terrorized in their own homes, and are angry that protesters were allowed to settle in, blocking streets, sounding their earsplitting horns in the middle of the night, and in some cases, intimidating residents for wearing masks.

Residents got an undisturbed night of sleep on Monday after a judge issued a 10-day injunction that day, barring the honking and authorizing the police to arrest or remove those knowingly violating the order.

“There’s many layers of complexity to dismantling this occupation,” said Mr. Bell. “One is the sheer size of it.”

The other is the size of the trucks — giant cabs, in some cases with their trailers still attached, parked on city streets. About a quarter of the trucks have children living in them “who could be at risk during police operation,” said Mr. Bell.

Some of the truck drivers had immobilized their vehicles by removing their tires and bleeding their brakes, he noted, adding to the complexity of dismantling the occupation.

To date, all the towing companies contracted by the city have refused to tow the giant vehicles, Steve Kanellakos, Ottawa city manager, told reporters Monday afternoon.

Mr. Bell said police officials are exploring several legal avenues, and in addition to more officers, they had asked for additional lawyers from various agencies, as well as experts in insurance, licensing and registration of large trucks.

“We will use everything within our means that currently exists and explore anything else that needs to be added to our toolbox to hold people engaged in this accountable,” said Mr. Bell.

He did not answer a reporter who asked when those new officers and experts are expected to arrive in the city.

The protests engulfing Canada’s capital were set off by the federal government’s requirement that truckers crossing the border from the United States show proof of vaccination against the coronavirus. Here is how the demonstrations have unfolded over the past two weeks.

Jan. 15: Vaccination mandates in Canada have been in effect since Oct. 30 for ship crews, railways and airline workers. But effective Jan. 15, the federal government expanded the requirement to truck drivers returning from the United States. One week later, a reciprocal policy went into effect in the United States for Canadian truckers crossing its border.

Jan. 22: Truck convoy groups departed from British Columbia along the Trans-Canada Highway, a highway system connecting the coasts, en route to Ottawa. Other groups drove from the Prairie and Atlantic provinces.

Jan. 28: The Ottawa police estimated that 1,000 to 2,000 people arrived in the capital and took part in protests over that weekend, on Jan. 29 and 30.

Jan. 29: A separate standoff emerged in Western Canada between truckers and the police at the U.S. border crossing in Coutts, Alberta. The local Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment said the peaceful protest devolved into an “unlawful blockade.”

Feb. 5-6: The police estimated that 5,000 people protested in Ottawa and that 1,000 vehicles clogged the streets. While the core group has been parked outside the Parliament building in Ottawa, protesters also organized rallies in other Canadian cities over the weekend, including in Toronto, Quebec City and Calgary.

Feb. 6: Jim Watson, the mayor of Ottawa, declared a state of emergency.

Feb. 8: Ottawa police said they had made 23 arrests and issued 1,300 tickets in connection with the protests.

As police officials in Ottawa try to dismantle the demonstration outside Parliament, millions of dollars in donations have poured in on crowdfunding platforms linked to the convoy groups.

The number and “sheer size” of contributions made to a GoFundMe campaign before it was shut down by the company on Friday have raised alarms, said Marco Mendicino, the minister of public safety, during a news conference on Wednesday afternoon.

“I think we’re all concerned about the lack of transparency, and therefore accountability, for the source of these funds and how they’re being used,” added Bill Blair, minister of emergency preparedness.

Through GoFundMe, organizers of the truck convoy raised 10 million Canadian dollars, about $7.8 million. The company shut down the fund-raiser and offered to refund donations after discussions with Canadian police officials. In a statement, the company said it had received evidence from law enforcement that weighed in its decision.

Still, officials have found at least six other platforms still raising money for the convoy, Peter Sloly, chief of the Ottawa police, told the City Council on Monday.

One of those platforms is GiveSendGo, a Christian crowdfunding site that had raised 9.7 million Canadian dollars, or $7.6 million, as of Wednesday afternoon on its main page. This does not include other fund-raisers hosted on the site to support the truckers, or the electronic bank transfers being accepted by a protest group calling itself Canada Unity.

The federal safety ministers also outlined broader security concerns at Wednesday’s news conference, where they were joined by the transport minister, Omar Alghabra. He pleaded for protesters to “go home” and abandon what he called “illegal economic blockades” at border crossings.

Mr. Blair said that about 5,000 people were dismissed from their shift at a factory in Windsor, Ontario, where a blockade at the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit is stalling a vital traffic artery for the automobile industry.

At the outset of the truck convoy protests, supporters attempted to link logistical delays and unverified images of empty grocery shelves to Canada’s mandate for vaccination.

Now, the ministers said, the protests themselves risk causing that reality by choking traffic at key border crossings in Ontario and Alberta.