Evidence of meeting #10 for Transport, Infrastructure and Communities in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
A recording is available from Parliament.
President, Spring Creek Carriers Inc.
You mentioned folks like Wolverine and Morrice, and I think Onfreight is down there as well. When I speak to those colleagues, they say they feel like there's a lot of misclassification and abuse going on in the automotive sector.
I play in the general freight markets; it's less-than-truckload. I'll move furniture, nuts and bolts, kitchen cabinetry—whatever. It's always something different, but we see that as well in the general freight market.
Some of our colleagues who are into more specialized and oversized tankers are starting to see it a bit, but not to the degree that it is with the dry vans.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you, Mr. Lewis.
Finally, for this round, we'll go to Ms. Nguyen.
Ms. Nguyen, the floor is yours. You have five minutes, please.
Liberal
Chi Nguyen Liberal Spadina—Harbourfront, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much to the witnesses for being here this morning.
It's really important to hear your comments.
You mentioned, Mr. Bylsma, some of the work that had been done and some of the data in the audits, and you noted that ESDC was involved in that. It sounds like some really positive steps are coming, but it's early days.
Could you talk a bit more about whether or not those are positive steps and where else you would like to see the federal role stepping in?
President, Spring Creek Carriers Inc.
Those are definitely positive steps. We see them working jointly at this scale and identifying carriers and drivers who are circumventing all the laws of the land. Ramping that up significantly would help.
Working between the federal and provincial jurisdictions and having collaboration is where we really need to see.... First of all, with the CRA, as I said earlier, it's a return on investment. We're not asking you guys to spend any more money, but you're going to bring in billions. I don't think we need to look at this and say we have to put a.... We're just asking you to enforce your own rules. By the way, there is some really low-hanging fruit that will more than pay for it.
Liberal
Chi Nguyen Liberal Spadina—Harbourfront, ON
On this idea of a shared database where we could better track and coordinate bad actors or all the companies, I understand that a provincial database exists where some of that data is collected.
Is that correct, Mr. McKee?
Executive Director, Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association
That is correct. Each province has its own iteration with some still using Excel spreadsheets.
Really, what we're looking for is a national carrier database that would track safety information, tax information and labour compliance indicators like WCB data. If we see gross non-compliance within a certain company for not paying WCB for their workers, we know there's a problem. That would allow the auditors at ESDC to further pursue that.
Again, I echo the comment that this is a joint effort between the federal government and the provinces. At the end of the day, the rules in place to help enforce this lie within the federal government.
Liberal
Chi Nguyen Liberal Spadina—Harbourfront, ON
Would you welcome or recommend a larger role for the federal government in terms of collaboration and a more robust database?
Liberal
Executive Director, Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association
That's correct, yes.
Liberal
Chi Nguyen Liberal Spadina—Harbourfront, ON
I understand that's at the provincial level, so the role for the province could be better integrated and harmonized if we had coordination at that level.
Executive Director, Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association
Exactly. We need coordination among the provinces. That work is under way, to the best of our understanding.
We just need this committee and this government to continue to support that and to continue to provide resources to ESDC to help it continue these audits and provide more auditors.
Liberal
Chi Nguyen Liberal Spadina—Harbourfront, ON
Could you speak, all three of you, about the role of the provinces in the enforcement piece? From my understanding, that work is done at the provincial level.
What about resourcing for that? What would it look like to improve that?
Executive Director, Atlantic Provinces Trucking Association
Generally, for provinces, the low-hanging fruit to help tackle this problem is analyzing WCB data, as we said. WCB in each province is generally a quasi-governmental organization. If it's headquartered or baseplated in the provinces, it's an easy search of a database to see how many payroll violations each company or each firm has, and then you can audit accordingly.
President, Spring Creek Carriers Inc.
I'm going to speak on behalf of Ontario. There is a great deal of effort being made in the Ministry of Transportation and Ministry of Finance. As I said before, we need to see that ramp up.
It's a lot about road safety. We're holding their feet to the fire on driver training, the safety of drivers on the road and more presence at the scales. This is where we're going to deal with the safety issue. The Ontario government is working toward having a greater presence at the scales, but it's great having other government departments there to help audit as well. That will help with targeting.
Going back to one of your previous comments about getting all the departments to work collaboratively, it's also about taking action. It's not just about having the database so we can all say, “Oh look, we have this wonderful database.” It's about actually putting the resources in place so we can take action against these criminals, basically—the tax evaders.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much, Ms. Nguyen.
Thank you, Mr. Bylsma and Mr. McKee.
Ms. Gagnon, thank you for being here.
Bloc
Xavier Barsalou-Duval Bloc Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC
Mr. Chair, I rise on a point of order.
I don't want to name names or accuse anyone, but I just want to know if it is permitted to use a phone to take photos while the committee is in session.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
No, it is not permitted. I’ve passed the message on to everyone.
Thank you, Mr. Barsalou‑Duval.
I want to thank all of our witnesses for their appearance here today and for their testimony on this very important study. We look forward to sharing the results of this study with you when it's completed. We wish you safe travels home.
Colleagues, we're going to suspend for two minutes to allow for a transition to our second round of witnesses.
This meeting is suspended.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
I call the meeting back to order.
Before we move forward, I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of our second round of witnesses.
First of all, welcome to you all.
Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mic, and please mute yourself when you are not speaking.
For those on Zoom, at the bottom of your screen, you can select the appropriate channel for interpretation: floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece to select the desired channel.
As a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair.
I have two placards with me. I have a yellow placard and a red placard. If I hold up the yellow placard, it means you have 15 seconds left, and I'll kindly ask that you wrap up. If I hold up the red placard, I will be in the unfortunate situation of having to cut your mic off so that I can turn the floor over to another member for questioning.
Colleagues, I'd like to welcome our second round of witnesses.
We welcome the president of the Fraternité des constables du contrôle routier du Québec, Jean‑Claude Daignault.
From the Toronto Police Service, we have Matt Moyer, an inspector in traffic services, joining us by video conference. Thank you for your presence, sir.
From Teamsters Canada, we have Mariam Abou-Dib, executive director of government affairs. Welcome to you as well.
We'll begin our opening remarks with Jean‑Claude Daignault.
Mr. Daignault, you have five minutes.
Jean-Claude Daignault President, Fraternité des constables du contrôle routier du Québec
Honourable members, thank you.
I represent the union of the Fraternité des constables du contrôle routier du Québec, and I will begin by explaining the role of highway controllers.
Highway controllers are the equivalent of the Quebec transportation police. They intercept approximately 100,000 trucks per year.
What is known as the “Driver Inc.” model is a cancer that is currently eating away at the trucking industry in two areas: the economy, and road safety and road users.
I won't talk about the economic aspect, because it's not my area of expertise and it's not part of our mandate. However, road safety and road users definitely are. As highway controllers, we enforce a dozen Quebec laws and some 50 regulations, including the regulation respecting the hours of driving and rest of heavy vehicle drivers, which will form the basis of our presentation.
Unfortunately, there are currently far too many deaths on our roads, and this is a cause for concern. In our work, we have found that the regulations on driving hours have many loopholes and that it is easy to circumvent the system. The system was put in place several years ago in response to the regulation. Previously, truck drivers used a paper logbook. Now they use an electronic logbook called an “electronic logging device.”
Strangely enough, even union members tell me that it was much easier to do their job and catch cheaters when truckers used paper logs, because the electronic logging device does not give them access to specific keys that allow them to access certain information associated with electronic logs.
Our brief includes six recommendations, four of which relate to the regulation respecting the hours of driving. It should be noted that the federal commercial vehicle driver hours of service regulations were subsequently adopted by all provinces. However, we cannot tell each province to adopt its own driving hours regulations. That would be completely unworkable. For example, if we decided to set the number of driving hours per day at 13, 14 with the rest of the work, and the province of Ontario decided to set this number at 15 and another province set it at 16, it would be unmanageable for companies. Basically, the federal government has a huge responsibility, since the provinces base their regulations on federal regulations. Quebec's provincial regulations are almost a carbon copy of the federal regulations.
Two other recommendations are not directly related to the regulations and concern truck insurance. We have never been able to check insurance anywhere in Canada. Even when we are given a certificate, we have no way of verifying whether it is valid or not. When we try to call the insurance companies, they say they cannot answer because personal information is involved.
Obviously, when you stop a truck with a fifth-wheel tractor registered in Alberta and a semi-trailer from British Columbia, you can't enforce provincial laws. Obviously, there is no national safety registry. Each province manages things its own way.
When companies that commit fraud run into problems in one province, they move to another province, and life is good. They start their scheme all over again. It's like getting married three or four times in different provinces. That's what's happening right now.
There is no doubt that the “Driver Inc.” model poses many problems. What we are proposing will not solve everything, but it is still fairly easy and quick to change a regulation. This could send a very clear message to the illegal industry to fall into line and start complying with the regulations again.
Returning to the regulation respecting the hours of driving, Canadian law enforcement agencies currently have no way of verifying whether the information recorded in the electronic logging device is true or false. There is none. If I'm dealing with a legal company that has a payroll system, I can compare the information recorded in the logging device with the information provided by that company. All I have to do is go to the company's offices and ask to see their payroll system. If a driver is paid for 40 hours, that's the number that should appear in their device.
The problem we have is that we cannot know if a driver has been paid for 80 hours, even if the logbook shows that he has worked 40 hours, because in the “Driver Inc.” model, the driver isn't paid by the hour. He receives a lump sum.
In our brief, we gave an example of a cheque for just over $2,500 for two weeks of work. This doesn't include expenses, gas or taxes. Ultimately, the government will reap the benefits.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you, Mr. Daignault.
Next we'll go to Mr. Moyer.
Mr. Moyer, the floor is yours. You have five minutes for your opening remarks, sir.
Matt Moyer Inspector, Traffic Services, Toronto Police Service
Good morning and thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for having me, committee members.
I am speaking to you from Toronto. I am currently the inspector of traffic services. We have a very large unit that does enforcement and education for the City of Toronto.
One of our biggest challenges moving forward is traffic congestion, but that is part and parcel of some of the issues that have been raised and discussed this morning by the other witnesses. I will refer to them very briefly and open myself to questions later.
There's always the issue of our relationship with the trucking industry and what our role is when it comes to traffic safety and public safety. I will say to the committee this morning that we have members designated for dealing with compliance and for issues in trucking and transportation in the province of Ontario and, more importantly, in the city of Toronto.
One of the challenges we have had is regarding training. I want the committee to know, first and foremost, that a very limited number of officers are properly trained to do CVSA compliance and hold people to a standard. That represents a challenge for us every day.
With trucks that are moving into the city, we often do what we call level I and level II compliance checks. This raises a challenge for our members because officer safety is paramount. Finding some place to stop an 18-wheeler coming through the city of Toronto when traffic congestion is such a problem is a great challenge to public and officer safety. We are often required to use malls just to hold people to deal with the compliance issues.
I heard a term used by the witnesses previously this morning, “bad actors”. Well, bad actors are what keep us in business, and, yes, we do run across them, so I'll highlight a couple of the challenges we've had with the trucking industry.
One is the Ministry of the Attorney General. We've had a hot and cold relationship simply because a number of charges we've laid are not always dealt with according to what we believe sets the proper message both to drivers and to trucking companies. Charges are often dropped or traded off for a lesser charge simply to move the process through the court system. That has always been a challenge for us and continues to be a challenge. It's our challenge, and we are dealing with it. We are having good conversations, but we still, as one of the previous witnesses said, have a ways to go.
The office that I overlook in Toronto deals with enforcement and investigation. We have a motor squad, a recon office and the CVSA. We are multi-faceted in our approach. One of the questions asked of me previously was about my relationship with the Highway Traffic Act and other police services in Ontario. We have the OACP meeting, which is a committee. It is the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police. I am part of the traffic committee. We have a great working relationship with other police services in Ontario, but to suggest that our priorities are always aligned is not necessarily accurate.
When you're policing a city congested with four million people and a losing hockey team, it's very difficult to keep people focused on compliance and some of the issues regarding the rules of the road, really.
We don't deal with big trucks as much, because if they're coming through our city, they're coming along the 401. If they're stopping, we deal with them. If they pass by, they move right across the province and on to the next province. We have a limited number of interactions. For those who do come through the city, we most certainly try to stop and engage as many as possible. I've often said that it doesn't necessarily require you to have a ticket in your hand when you're leaving. Sometimes a good conversation can be as impactful.
According to the standards set out by the province, we do many level I and level II inspections, which speaks to the inspections of drivers' licences and the inspections of vehicles.
That's our role. I will open myself to any questions you might have.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Thank you very much, Inspector Moyer.
Next we'll go to Ms. Abou-Dib.
The floor is yours for five minutes, please.
