Thank you.
First, on behalf of the 130,000 members of Teamsters Canada, thank you, esteemed committee members, for inviting us to these important hearings, which are hopefully meant to find solutions to the crisis that is plaguing our trucking industry, creating unsafe roads and unsafe working conditions for drivers, and contributing to a significant amount of missing tax dollars. Moreover, the crisis is also creating a climate of fear and xenophobia in our industry that, if left unaddressed, will only worsen and result in grave unintended consequences for all drivers out there.
Second, dear committee members, this is not a new issue. Teamsters, alongside several partners, including an unlikely one in the Canadian Trucking Alliance, with which we continue to work closely on this particular file, have been raising awareness and speaking to the government for just under a decade. Yes, we do have good laws in Canada, but the primary problem is enforcement. We are in a crisis of compliance, and this crisis has given birth to others. We agree fully with the CTA's presented outline of these crises yesterday—namely, in road safety, human rights abuses, labour laws and tax fraud.
We are not sure what the government is waiting for anymore. In 2022 and 2024, the fall economic statements from the federal government committed to addressing the problem. However, we are, and we remain, far from accomplishing this. More needs to be done.
As I'm certain you've been hearing over and over again, a major component of this model is that it treats employees of trucking companies as independent contractors. This is not meant to target owner-operators who are in fact legitimate. Many are Teamster members. We are talking about drivers who have been tricked, forced or required to incorporate in order for employers to bypass the mandatory deductions for income tax, overtime pay, vacation pay, sick days and so on and so forth.
Unfortunately, we also know that this results in the potential evasion of income taxes, whether knowingly or not, where employees don't report their deductions. The impact of that is well known. We concur with the CTA's numbers and well-researched statistics. They are conservative estimates worth restating here. The amounts saved amount to millions of illegal savings each year for various companies. For the government, this translates into billions of dollars in lost revenue.
There are important driver and public safety concerns. The government's own data shows that trucking companies that misclassify drivers are more likely to operate with drivers who are untrained and undertrained and have questionable insurance, licensing and certification. Let's be clear: This puts lives in danger—those of our drivers and those in our communities.
We would be remiss not to mention that another contribution to this scheme is the misuse and abuse of the temporary foreign worker program. Some companies are engaging in modern-day indentured labour with workers who do not know their rights or obligations and who fall into unsafe and illegal dependencies on employers who abuse the system. Just to add fuel to the fire, this is now resulting in xenophobic attitudes toward drivers who may or may not be new Canadians and many non-white drivers in the industry.
We recognize the efforts the government has made, but clearly they're not enough. The onus remains on the employee, whose circumstances are already precarious, to lodge a complaint or to raise these issues. Much more proaction on the part of the government and enforcement is needed.
We'll conclude by echoing the calls for more coordination between the federal and provincial governments and agencies on a national misclassification blitz in the trucking industry, with real penalties that employers will actually feel. Many more resources are required in order to increase the deployment of various government agencies to truck inspection stations and along the roads across this country. There is an urgent need to expedite the completion of and investment in a national database by Transport Canada that will create the necessary oversight and knowledge of who owns and operates these fleets, with their safety records, in all provinces. We also need a thorough review of the temporary foreign worker program and an end to closed permits, where much of the abuse takes place.
Thank you very much for your time.
