A letter from MPP Lise Vaugeois, Thunder Bay-Superior North to the Manitoulin Expositor on Northern Ontario truck safety and eroding standards in trucking:
As one of the sponsors of the ONDP’s Northern Highway Safety Bill (Bill 49), I would like to respond to the comments made in a letter to the editor by Algoma-Manitoulin Progressive Conservative MPP Rosenberg (Manitoulin Expositor, December 24, 2025).
The twinning of Hwy 17 between Thunder Bay and Nipigon was set in motion many years ago, long before the current government took office. All respect to the MTO engineers for the completed twinning on Highway 17 and the straightening of Highway 11 between Nipigon and Beardmore. I am grateful for this work but also know that much more needs to be done. Both highways 11 and 17 have enormously long stretches with no passing lanes and nothing but soft, half shoulders for pulling off. Drivers have nowhere to stop and rest; there is often no cell service; and, as we know, the privatization of winter road maintenance has left us with inconsistent standards and very poor conditions depending on which section you are driving on. Our Bill 49 would have brought winter maintenance back under the control of the MTO. We are also continuing the fight for an 8-hour road clearance standard on the Trans-Canada highway – the same standard as the 400 series of highways.
In the ONDP we have consistently supported exploring the 2+1 model for our highways, especially where twinning is not viable; however, the 2+1 pilot project for North Bay announced in 2022 has still not been started. We support the calls by NOMA, FONOM, and the Northern Policy Institute to focus on improving the safety of the Trans-Canada highway in Northern Ontario by making it a nation-building priority to develop 2+1 and/or twinning plans as soon as possible.
We have a new, $30M inspection station in Shuniah, east of Thunder Bay, but it is rarely open. The Minister of Transportation told the Ontario Trucking Association that the station should be open 24/7; however, when his government voted against Bill 49, they claimed that staffing the station for even half that time, i.e. 12 hours/day/seven days a week, would be too much, calling into question the sincerity of the Minister’s earlier statement.
On a positive note, the MTO is currently soliciting applications from people interested in training to become Transportation Enforcement Officers (TEOs) with a focus on northern recruitment (8 positions). This is a step in the right direction. When recruits have been drawn from across the entire province, they are often sent to Thunder Bay for training at a cost of $165,000/person; however, post-training, there has been no obligation to stay in Thunder Bay or even to remain a TEO. I am hopeful that a regional recruitment strategy will open doors to permanent positions for people proud to live and work in Northwestern Ontario.
Regarding the licensing of drivers and the regulation of the trucking industry, there are enormous gaps, well-documented in Auditor General reports (2019, 2023), that the government is failing to address. For example, as of 2023, the Ministry of Colleges and Universities only had 8 inspectors covering over 700 trade-school locations, including over 230 commercial driving schools.
Clearly, it is not possible to inspect commercial driving schools without more inspectors. Beyond the schools, however, there is a failure to inspect trucking companies. According to Ontario Trucking Association senior vice-president of policy, Geoff Wood, “currently, close to 90% of trucking fleets operating have never been audited by MTO officials” (from an October 2025 OTA article). Normalizing regular inspections is just one of many urgent recommendations made by the OTA to the government of Ontario.
I recently attended a town hall held by commercial truck drivers in Brampton and learned about their poor working conditions as well as the extent of wage theft they experience. Wage theft is not limited to new Canadians but is also the case for people who have been driving for over twenty years; however, complaints to the Ministry of Labour, responsible for labour code standards, go unanswered. In addition to overt wage theft, the worst companies only pay their drivers when their vehicle is moving. They are not paid if stuck at the border, if the highway is closed, or when loading and unloading. Under these conditions, drivers take risks to save time, and this puts all road users at risk. If we want to change driver-behaviour, we need to force companies to pay wages for all time worked. Further, the Labour Standards office must have the capacity to follow up on wage theft and penalize those companies that steal from their workers.
Finally, I want to introduce northern highway users to what is happening in the Caledon, Brampton and Bolton area of Ontario where hundreds of trucks are parking and operating, illegally, on farmland adjacent to the secondary roads used by local people to get in and out of their communities. The conservative government is well-aware of the illegal occupation of farmland, as well as the risks to local car drivers competing with hundreds of trucks using the same secondary roads.
Caledon Community Road Safety advocacy group (CCRSA) has been working diligently for road safety, not only in their own communities, but for all Ontarians. They have observed, however, that Minister Sarkaria, Premier Ford and Minister Piccini (Labour) are enthusiastic supporters of a national trucking association known to be guilty of designating their drivers as self-employed (known as Driver Inc.) – a practice that leaves drivers with no labour or WSIB protections while undercutting companies that follow the rules.
There is clearly a political problem here. The dangers people are experiencing on our roads and highways are well-known and members of our northern ONDP caucus have been shouting them from the rooftops for years. George Pirie, Conservative Minister of Northern Economic Development, has claimed that if we want action, we need to shout louder, so, if that is what is required, let’s get all our voices on board to so that a day doesn’t go by that our voices demanding highway safety are not heard.
Please visit my website and Facebook page to join our campaign to flood conservative MPPS with letters demanding that those operating trucking fleets legitimately are supported; that those cheating the system are shut down; that highway maintenance be returned to the MTO; that the Shuniah station be staffed 24/7; that building out our northern highway infrastructure is supported as a provincial and federal priority, and that the safety of all people using our northern roads and highways is prioritized over partisan political interests.