Frustrated with proliferating lawlessness throughout Ontario’s trucking industry, the Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) has launched a provincial safety campaign – Stop Illegal Trucking Ontario – to end the illicit schemes that are destroying the province’s trucking industry, abusing workers, and threatening road safety.
This initiative is a direct response to the “Driver Inc.” model – an underground economy that facilitates, tax evasion, labour abuse, and is eliciting a total breakdown of road safety standards across the province. This scheme also encourages poorly trained, unqualified drivers and unsafe trucks to operate with little oversight, putting Ontario families at risk.
“Ontario’s roads are under attack, but the problem isn’t a lack of laws – it’s a lack of the level and frequency of enforcement required to address this situation,” said OTA Chair Mark Bylsma. “We are engaging concerned citizens and asking them to tell the Ontario government to take immediate and decisive action against the widespread lawlessness and non-compliance that have led to the deterioration of trucking safety being witnessed by Ontarians.”
OTA has had ongoing conversations with MTO about these issues and recommended additional steps the government can take to correct course. OTA continues to work directly with Transportation Minister Sarkaria and his government to create a forum for the OTA and other key industry stakeholders to outline further measures, solutions and specific timelines needed as we tackle these challenges.
Supporters can take action now by visiting Stop Illegal Trucking and voice their concerns to MPPs and the premier about the rapid erosion of road safety in Ontario, urge a series of solutions, and demand accountability from those abusing the system and endangering highway safety.
Some of OTA’s requests to address lawlessness and make Ontario roads safer, include:
- Ensuring Truck Inspection Stations are open 24/7, with a priority on various critical locations, like Northern Ontario;
- Ensuring all heavy trucking companies have a compliance assessment of their operation. About 80 percent of trucking companies in Ontario have never received a safety screening or review by the province.
- Ending the subsidization of unsafe trucking fleets by closing long-standing regulatory loopholes through government controlled and managed insurance programs.
- Crack down on illegal truck yards threatening safety and ruining the livability of citizens in communities like Caledon.
- Changing commercial licensing based on vehicle configuration operated (endorsement based).
- Ensuring driver licence fraud within commercial truck driver licensing is eliminated.
Concerned citizens and community safety groups are ready to lend their support to the campaign.
“Notoriously, communities like ours have attracted some of the worst actors in the trucking industry. Our once quiet community is now overrun with an increase of severe crashes involving trucks, illegal truck yards and general lawlessness and negligent behaviour on our roadways,” says Carmela Palkowski, a director of the Caledon Community Road Safety Advocacy Group (CCRSA). “We are thankful for the OTA bringing a voice to the dangers and risks we and many other communities across the province are experiencing every day. We need to end this crisis now.”
The OTA is calling on all Ontarians to send a clear message to Queen’s Park: It is time to restore enforcement to our highways and end lawlessness in trucking immediately.
Supporters can take action now at Stop Illegal Trucking.
The Price of Lawlessness:
- Fiscal Crisis: Driver Inc. and worker exploitation cost Ontario an estimated $1.7 billion in lost wages and benefits annually – money drained from hospitals and schools.
- Safety Gap: Rogue carriers divert up to $20,000 per truck by cutting corners on training and maintenance, putting families at risk on our highways.
- Human Cost: Forced labour and Labour Market Impact Assessment fraud are “open secrets,” with vulnerable newcomers being extorted for residency and paid as little as one-third of a fair wage.
- Ghost Fleet Proliferation: Because about 80% of Ontario’s trucking fleets have never been inspected at their facilities, thousands of “Satisfactory-Unaudited” rigs that lack oversight share the roads with Ontario families every day.