As a follow-up to its two-part series on unregulated truck driver training schools or “licensing mills”, the Toronto Star published an editorial that calls for the province to clamp down on “shoddy” training centres and to make training a prerequisite for commercial truck licensing.
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The current rules have created an incentive structure that all but guarantees aspiring drivers will seek out unregulated programs. They’re cheaper, faster and provide a service, which while narrowly and recklessly conceived, is not illegal.
That’s unacceptable. It should not be left to wannabe truckers to ensure they have the training they need to drive safely. Queen’s Park should do with truck drivers as it has it done with forklift operators, and make provincially regulated training a prerequisite for licensing.
Some 375,000 new truck drivers will be needed in the next decade to replace retiring baby boomers. This is a pressing problem with an easy fix.
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Read the full editorial here.