The Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) aims to work with the Ministry of Transportation to advance enforcement of trucking laws and regulations and create safer roads for Ontarians and a level competitive playing field.
There has been considerable discussion in recent months about reducing interprovincial trade barriers, with mutual recognition being discussed as a potential solution to help streamline regulations and address these barriers within the trucking sector.
Although the OTA supports measures to make the movement of trucks across Canada more efficient, Mutual Recognition is a not a suitable nor sustainable regulatory regime for the trucking industry, OTA stated in consultations with the Ontario Government as part of the comment period for Ontario’s Free Trade and Mobility Act.
There are many concerns with Mutual Recognition, says OTA. As an example, Ontario’s hours-of-service regulations for truck drivers provide mandatory daily and weekly off-duty periods and other checks and balances so drivers have appropriate time off for rest and recovery. Drivers’ activities are also monitored through third party certified electronic logging devices (ELDs) which significantly reduce the ability for cheating. However, other provincial hours of service regimes do not have the same regulatory oversight or have expanded driving hours; or do not require ELDs on all heavy trucks. Adopting mutual recognition, therefore, could increase road safety risks for jurisdictions with more robust regimes.
Mutual recognition could potentially impact the transfer of commercial drivers’ licences between jurisdictions by inadvertently eliminating checks and balances currently in place to ensure mandatory training requirements required by Ontario were met in other jurisdictions, as well as diminish oversight capabilities of Ontario’s CVOR program, which is considered robust by industry standards when compared to other provincial truck safety monitoring regimes.
“Reducing the effectiveness of our existing laws and regulations that apply to trucks driving on Ontario roads is not an effective solution to improving inter-provincial trade,” says Geoff Wood, OTA’s Sr VP, Policy. “OTA supports progressive action to make interprovincial trade more efficient and productive, but it cannot come at the cost of road safety or putting Ontario’s trucking industry at a competitive disadvantage.”
While this review is underway, OTA believes the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) can also take immediate action to combat the broader and more acute issues impacting truck safety in the province by working to enact the following changes to create safer roads in Ontario:
- Eliminating the satisfactory-unaudited safety rating category to require regular audit or compliance reviews for both new and existing carriers.
- 24/7 operation of commercial vehicle inspection facilities staffed with appropriate federal and provincial enforcement agencies to review all applicable compliance with truck safety, labour and tax obligations while deterring, tax fraud, labour trafficking, and drug smuggling.
- Use of an endorsement-based truck licensing system based on vehicle configuration types and the treatment of Class A & D licenses as occupational licenses.