The Ontario Trucking Association welcomed a bill introduced this week by Municipal Affairs and Housing Minister Rob Flack, which proposes a waiting period to test for a commercial driver’s licence after a driver receives a Class G licence; but the association cautioned that more oversight is still required to restore highway safety and clean up the criminality in the trucking sector.
The bill contains similar oversight measures as a private member’s bill first introduced by MPP Amarjot Sandhu last year, but was interrupted by the provincial election at the time.
OTA president Stephen Laskowski said the bill was a step in the right direction, but also stressed that legislators must work with industry and the public while keeping in mind protections pertaining to highway safety, immigration abuse and labour rights.
“Immigration is important to the future of our sector. But right now, the system is broken in our industry and being manipulated by unscrupulous carriers in an orchestrated manner to abuse sources of foreign labour,” said Laskowski.
“This bill is critical in identifying how commercial licenses are accessed by newcomers to Ontario, who want to work in the trucking industry; but we must also ensure that we design the system by dealing with issues of employee abuse abuses and lack of driver training oversight.”
OTA has been warning the government of various labour abuse schemes designed to entrap newcomers who come to Canada seeking to build a life for themselves and their families. In some cases, these schemes have grown to be so extreme that many newcomers are subjected to unsafe working conditions, forced labour, and practices that deliberately indebt them to employers.
The problem has escalated to the point that OTA has called on Minister Piccini to suspend trucking immigration programs until these issues are fully addressed and corrected.
“This bill opens a process to examine some of the issues at the heart of this crisis, which we need to deal with head-on,” said Laskowski. “It’s time to clean up our industry and protect the human rights and labour rights of newcomers to our province.”