Transport Committee on Oct. 28th, 2025

[Amarjot Singh Sahney]

If you ask me personally, being in trucking for almost three years as a driver and being an owner-operator, mostly it was fatigue that was the major cause in my study that I saw. It's not only the driving for 12 hours or 13 hours straight, but sometimes, in the rest areas, there is not enough space to park. You eventually have to park illegally. That also leads to major accidents.

The government should look into that one too. On the 401, when I was driving it, it wasn't that busy, but after six or seven years, it's been super busy at night. If you travel the 401 at night, you see only trucks. Most of the trucks are not even parked inside the rest areas.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lewis.

Thank you, Mr. Singh Sahney.

Next we'll go to Mr. Gaheer.

Mr. Gaheer, the floor is yours. You have six minutes, sir.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for appearing before the committee.

Mr. Webb, my questions for this session are going to be mostly for you. In the first session of this committee, I was actually losing my mind a bit. You hit the nail on the head in regard to talking about the two models—the Drivers Inc. incorporated drivers versus employees. There was testimony shared in the first hour that they're afraid because there are more incorporated drivers and, therefore, apparently, safety is at risk.

We know that Transport Canada, provinces and literally everyone and anyone who collects collision data and fatality data don't delineate that data between the ones caused by incorporated drivers and the ones caused by employees. All the claims from the first session of this committee that one model is inherently more safe than the other model can't be based on stats, because there are no stats.

Do you have any comments on that?

[Edward Webb]

I'm in agreement. I have not seen any stats.

I've been doing transportation safety and compliance for 23 years now. I have not seen any distinction between incorporated drivers and employees. There is nobody on the roadside—and I've seen a lot of accidents—who's going to say, “Hey, I'm an incorporated driver” or “I'm a company driver”. There is none of that. By focusing on that.... In what I do, I don't see it at all.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

I think that confirms what I've heard as well.

You talked about safety. You talked about training schools and standardization. You said that you'd bring changes to the safety code. You said that the safety code is federal, but it's enforced provincially and that you'd bring changes to that, including, largely, standardization. Do you want to expand on that?

[Edward Webb]

Here in Alberta, where I'm based, all our auditors are contractors. MTO in Ontario does the national safety code audit for the carriers. It would be nice if.... They can be contractors. That's not what I'm getting at.

The information from each province should be shared, and they should be doing the same type of audit in each province, with the same questions and looking at the same information. That way, we can get a standardization of the answers and the problems we're having in and amongst the different provinces.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

I'm not an expert in this space, but is there a requirement for ongoing training for drivers once they have their licences?

[Edward Webb]

Yes. It's called remedial training. If you have a driver who has a harsh event or a critical event—a speed event, a lane departure, following too close based on their cameras or their ELDs, hours of service violations or bad CVSA inspections—you have to follow up with that driver. You have to retrain them based on what it was, whether it's a pretrip issue or they're speeding—because speed kills. We all know that.

Also, on the roadside inspections, do the drivers actually know how to do a pretrip? I can tell you that in my experience most drivers have a perfect pretrip every day, which we see on the road is not actual in effect. Getting those drivers trained correctly is the proper way.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Outside of a remedial issue or an issue that flags a particular driver, is there ongoing training that takes place?

[Edward Webb]

For most of the carriers that I see, yes. They will put them through a training platform, which is okay, but you need to go a little further. Redo a road evaluation or do practical training, rather than just a course.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

You also spoke about how the carriers should receive training as well. Do they receive any training in the current environment?

[Edward Webb]

When they go for the CVOR or a safety fitness certificate, they have to do an exam, so they do a bit of training. However, owners, for the most part, do not have all of the same training as their drivers, dispatch or safety people. Technically, if you are going to direct somebody, you should have the same training as them. Otherwise, you don't know what they're supposed to be doing.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

Great. Thank you.

I want to switch my questioning to Mr. Chatwal. You spoke about the tax issues. I feel like this entire issue is a tax issue masquerading as a safety issue. We just discussed with Mr. Webb how this is a completely different issue entirely.

Thinking about tax, you said the CRA currently has tools in its tool box that can be used to address any kind of tax non-compliance. What would happen if a change was brought in regarding the T4A? This has been discussed at this committee. If that is made mandatory and carriers have to submit it to the CRA, they'll know what a particular incorporated driver is making.

[Gurpreet Chatwal]

If your concern is that the drivers are not reporting their true incomes, this is not a simple fix. If you're saying the T4A should be addressed only to this specific industry, there's a lot more compliance than that. Right now, per the legislation, all incorporations are required to provide only an invoice. If it's industry-specific, that's a different story, but we're talking about something Canada-wide here. We have every industry.

You are saying that only incorporations related to Driver Inc. should be reporting a T4A. It's not that simple. You'd need to administer every single payment you made to a corporation specifically to just drivers. For any payment you made to, let's say, Bell Canada or other incorporated businesses, you wouldn't need to issue a T4A. It's not that simple, and I don't think it's an easy fix.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Gaheer.

[Iqwinder Gaheer, Liberal, Mississauga—Malton, ON]

I'll come back to it. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

That sounds good.

Mr. Barsalou‑Duval, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the witnesses for being with us today.

I am going to start with you, Mr. Webb.

In your presentation, you said that a lot of things had been said about the Driver Inc. model, but you don't have raw data in order to arrive at formal conclusions. As the Insurance Bureau of Canada representatives said, the existing and known data that we can mention include the rising number of accidents and the rising number of claims. We know that in Quebec over the last year there has been a record number of deaths in accidents involving heavy trucks. Another public number shows the rise in the number of drivers working on the Driver Inc. model.

Given all that, I am sure my question will interest you. The Motor Vehicle Transport Act allows the Department of Transport to study practices in the transport industry. That is one of the requests we have made.

Do you think that Transport Canada studying the Driver Inc. model will enable us to know more and connect the dots among these factors?

[Edward Webb]

Yes, I guess you could. As I said earlier—and I listened to the other people talking about this—I don't see the model versus the employee and the difference between the training. It starts with the carrier and when they bring them on—

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Right.

[Edward Webb]

I hope I'm answering that correctly.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Your answer was good, and that's why I interrupted you. Since I had an answer, I wanted to move on to another question.

My next question is for you, Mr. Chatwal.

You said you were a chartered professional accountant. I have the same academic background as you and I am also an accountant. I studied accounting at university. Some points in your remarks caught my attention. You can confirm those points by answering the questions I am going to ask you.

To my knowledge, when someone is an incorporated company and is a subcontractor, it is the employee, not the employer, who must pay certain social security contributions. For example, if I am an employer, I will have to pay a portion of my employee's pension plan, while if the person working for me does not have employee status and instead is self-employed, the employee will have to pay the pension plan contribution. The same applies to employment insurance premiums and vacation pay.

Do you agree with me?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Mr. Chatwal, before you respond, for the benefit of our interpreters, could you speak closer to the microphone, please?

Thank you, sir. I'll let you respond.

[Gurpreet Chatwal]

Let me understand your question. You said that the difference between incorporation and an employee is that an employer is required to pay the CPP employer portion of the payroll—I think that's what you're referring to—and asked if there was any difference for someone who is self-employed, a Driver Inc.

Yes, if there's a Driver Inc., you would obviously have your income go into your corporation. You have two options. You have an option to take payroll, where you would pay your employee portion and the employer portion of CPP, but you also have a mechanism where you can take dividends. Dividends don't require you to pay CPP. This is entirely within the statute.