Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to speak today.
My name is Amarjot Singh Sahney. I work as both a driver and an owner-operator. I am here to share the driver perspective, as the Driver Inc. issue is a perspective that has been largely missing from this discussion.
To date, the media and several organizations are painting Driver Inc. as fleet abuse and exploitation towards the newcomer, but the reality is very different. Most newcomer drivers cannot even incorporate when they first arrive in Canada. They are required to work as a payroll employee under a temporary foreign worker or LMIA program in order to obtain permanent residency.
During those two or three years, many workers work under slave-like conditions just to maintain their status and to achieve their PR, which is permanent residency. They are assigned routes that established drivers don't want to take. They spend 36-hour resets on the road away from home. They are often sent to remote provinces that struggle to fill trucking positions, and they have low, fixed salaries. This is simply to secure their permanent residency.
Only after gaining their PR status do many of these drivers incorporate, not to avoid taxes but to finally have control, dignity, freedom and their professional licence. Despite that, Driver Inc. is being blamed for nearly every issue in trucking—safety, compliance and reputation—whenever an incident happens, and immigrant drivers have become national news. These drivers are judged and vilified before anyone has stopped to ask why they choose this model in the first place.
The main reason, in my perspective, is flexibility and family balance. Today's drivers are younger with a family and children. Trucking is a demanding job. Incorporation allows them to create schedules that balance road life with home life. It gives them the ability to plan their work around their personal commitments, family needs and rest time.
The freedom to take extended time off is another major factor. Incorporation allows drivers to take one or two months each year so that they can visit their family abroad, something that payroll jobs rarely permit without risking the driver's position.
Incorporated drivers also value the ability to choose their loads and routes. This independence lets them select situations, circumstances and safety preferences rather than being forced into the routes they do not want.
Finally, incorporation represents an entrepreneurial opportunity to many immigrant drivers who are naturally entrepreneurial. Incorporation gives them a sense of ownership and a chance to follow the same path that many large fleet owners once did, starting from one single truck and building their business from the ground up.
I ask this committee why no one examined the real reason that drivers are incorporating. All incorporated drivers are forced into the model against their will, whether incorporation is allowed or not. Safety issues will continue to remain until the root causes are addressed. The real safety problems, in my perspective, are illegal and improper licensing, the aging and overloaded highways, lack of safety rest areas, and racism and discrimination, which mean that immigrant drivers, once praised as heroes during COVID 19, now face racism, online hate and bias from inspectors and within the industry.
According to me, the solution that I can propose to this committee is strict oversight of the driving schools, investment in the modernization of the national highway infrastructure, development of more safe rest areas for drivers and tackling racism and hatred in trucking.
My closing remarks are that the trucking industry is already facing a severe driver shortage. If you continue to restrict their flexibility and independence, we may risk losing more drivers, leading to shipment delays, high freight costs and high inflation for Canadian consumers.
Thank you so much.