Thank you, everybody, for allowing me to talk today. Commercial driver training is a complicated process, and carriers, upon hiring a driver regardless of the classification, feel that if they have a class 1 licence, they are properly trained by a driving school.
Incorporated drivers versus employees, and which is better or worse on the road, is a difficult question from the outside looking in. It's easy to blame incidents on a group of drivers without knowing their backgrounds and safety training, their mentoring with a carrier and what driving school they received their MELT from.
To understand which drivers could or couldn't be safer on the roads, we as an industry need to start at the beginning of the process and find these issues before trying to blame a single group of drivers. I'm hoping some points that I'll be discussing will create a conversation and possibly start a change in the industry, and with other industries to follow.
With the MELT program—I know it's been brought up lots—different provinces have different aspects to their programs. Drivers will look for the easiest one, not the best one, and the cheapest one, not the safest one. Also, if it is a grant or carrier that is paying for that driver, they go to ones the carrier has a connection with. That school may or may not follow the correct guidelines set out by the province. The largest area of concern is training schools' legitimacy across the country.
My concern is inconsistencies in the delivery of MELT around the country. It's a big issue, because there is not standardization.
All schools should have the same program for the training of drivers across the country, and the specialized services—overdimensional, TDG—would need extra training, based on the province and approved by the federal transportation office. The basic structure should be countrywide and have room for specialized and enhanced training.
As I see it, training at the school level is just as important as the drivers once hired by the carrier. That standardization training needs to be similar throughout the country. The national safety code is federal, but provincially run. I feel this area does need some change as well, if not looked upon in more depth.
On safety training platforms, regardless of whether it's an incorporated driver or a company driver, those platforms give a standard training to the driver, if the carrier uses them. Not all carriers use those platforms; they use internal ones. That becomes an issue as well. Standardization of current safety platforms is good, but the usage is not verified. That's something that needs to be looked at, I think.
With analytics being part of our daily lives in the transportation industry, these features in the equipment or through dash cameras and ELDs need to be controlled rather than a feature that can be turned off. This is an area I see that does need some regulatory change and possibly full industry acceptance to operate in the transportation sector regardless of size. This asset-monitoring tech should be used regardless of the size of the carrier.
As we all see, the number and severity of incidents on North American highways is a massive concern. Trying to pin the incident on an incorporated driver versus a company driver is extremely difficult. However, we can look at closer training of these drivers within the companies themselves. This can be done through regulatory audits, insurance audits, standardized national safety code OHS audits. There are different groups, such as third party approved auditors, who can work with MTO or other groups.
For what I do, there's no evidence that different training for incorporated drivers versus employees.... Both should be audited. In most cases, drivers are on their own at home doing these courses, and most likely, someone else is completing them.
Cross-province sharing of information, including CVSA inspections nationwide, incidents on abstracts, a shared template for abstracts, poor drivers, poor owner-operators and poor carriers, all should be part of the changes to the industry.
Proper driver evaluation processes need to be broken and handled by provinces differently based on the type of work that they do.
The education of owners or directors of companies is an area that needs attention. I'm not sure how to start it, but if you own your own transportation business, possibly you should have the same training as your drivers and staff, and not just the CVOR or safety fitness exams. I promote this myself in my work life. I feel it's extremely important to get the upper management to be just as knowledgeable as all the drivers.
Overall, I feel the industry has not adapted to the changes in the driver pool; the mental state of drivers today, especially work-life balance; improper training in the industry; restrictions on carriers and drivers in many different parts of the overall operation of the individual business needs—FAST cards, LMIA/foreign worker program, graduated licences for commercial drivers—insurance companies agreeing to carrier standards; and driver schools being certified and inspected annually.
Transportation is affected by the same issues that affect other industries across Canada and the public at large. I feel that resolution and standardization can create both a more consistent skill set and a level playing field for all drivers.
That's all I had.