Evidence of meeting #16 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 lauzon.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
He was talking about the many hours during which witnesses have testified.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna, BC
Mr. Chair, is it possible that we could invite Mr. Lauzon to come as a witness so that some of his testimony can be included in the report?
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Colleagues, I'm addressing the point of order, which I think we just did.
Now I'll turn the floor back over to our colleague, Mr. Lauzon, who is speaking to—
Conservative
Philip Lawrence Conservative Northumberland—Clarke, ON
On a point of order, Mr. Chair, I didn't appreciate the way you were dismissive of Mr. Jean-Denis Garon. He is a member of Parliament, and when someone steps into committee, they are a member of our committee. It might be for a long time; it might be for a short time. His points of order are just as valid as those of one of the standing members of the committee.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
That's 100% right, Mr. Lawrence, which is why I immediately, without hesitation, asked the clerk to send him—which was not a joke—a copy of the motion in case Mr. Barsalou-Duval did not leave him with one. That was very important to me.
As you know, I take this job very seriously, and I want to ensure that all diligence is there.
Mr. Lauzon, you have the floor.
Liberal
Stéphane Lauzon Liberal Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for giving me a chance to take three bites of my cookie and drink some water. I really appreciate it, and I'm sure you did it on purpose. You are so very kind.
We have had opportunities to speak regularly. We're good friends with the Bloc, and I want to remind my friend, Mr. Garon, that this motion is indeed closely related to a woman's testimony. She really made an impression on us during her testimony here. She talked about her 31 years of experience and the unfair competition in this sector. She also told us a bit about the challenge of working as a female truck driver. What more is there to say? Trucking is a great occupation. It's supposed to be profitable. A female trucker isn't supposed to lose money. In addition to her work, she has to handle other things, such as taking care of her family, her children, and so on. It's very difficult for a woman to be in such an unstable situation, given the compromises involved in working as a truck driver.
We talked about road safety, which is included. I was talking about that when there was a point of order. The witness in question told us that she was very concerned about this issue. People are still calling that out. The third witness told us there is less truck maintenance being done and less training for those who do truck maintenance. People are cutting corners. That's essentially what she told us. She said there's been a considerable increase in accidents attributable to mechanical failures. We don't have specific numbers on that. She referred primarily to the accident we saw in a news report, when a truck lost a wheel and flipped over or on its side.
Based on the discussions we've had and the questions we've asked, we need to create a national truck driver certification program. We talked about many aspects, including accidents related to inadequate training. For example, people don't know how to secure loads on trucks, or they don't know how to drive loaded trucks correctly, so as to avoid accidents.
A little earlier, we talked about heavy goods and dangerous goods. Now I'd like to talk to you about cargo securement. The witness in question raised an issue that we weren't aware of and hadn't discussed.
I actually remember seeing a truck carrying a load of steel at a standstill on Highway 15. Its cargo was on the ground, on the highway, because the tiedowns holding the goods had been cut. During securement, edge protection should have been placed to protect the tiedowns from the steel and prevent them from being cut. That wasn't done because the person responsible didn't even know they had to do it. I was one of the first to get stuck in the traffic jam. People realized how dangerous that could have been. The load could have fallen on a car and killed somebody. Fortunately, nobody was hurt or killed, but it could have happened. People reacted quickly. We were able to prevent an accident. It could have happened to me because it happened a few hundred feet from where I was.
During our discussion, the witness recommended not only creating a national program but also restoring integrity. I had talked about that a little earlier with the second witness. We really have a lot of homework to do. Not only do we need to make recommendations, but also, as a government, we need to restore the integrity of the truck driving profession and protect vulnerable workers. If we had a guide containing higher Canadian professional standards for truck drivers, that could definitely influence the provinces and territories.
The time for consultation is over. We're looking for solutions, and we have made concessions. We know from the conversations with the witnesses that they have asked the committee to move forward quickly. We're prepared to add two meetings to hear from the witnesses on the list that was proposed this afternoon. We're also prepared to hear from bereaved families. Since the beginning, we have always said that we wanted to meet with them in camera. Today, we're proposing to give them a choice. If they want to testify publicly, we will hear from them in a public meeting. If they want to testify in camera, we will hear from them in camera. That's what we're asking for to protect the dignity of bereaved families who have been through the ordeal of a road accident. It wasn't necessarily an accident related to the Driver Inc. phenomenon. It could be, but we don't know yet.
There's no place for the current exploitation of truck drivers. We really have to find a solution so that trucking remains a profession built on respect and professionalism. It really has to be recognized in the same way as any other profession. When I was working in my profession, if I made three mistakes, I would lose my qualification certificate. When I was teaching welding on pipelines, I had three chances. After three strikes, I would lose the right to weld. That's more or less the kind of solution we should be proposing. We have to tell truck drivers that they have the opportunity to do well, but that they have to avoid losing their qualifications. We have to remind them that we're keeping an eye on them. We have to tell them that we want to give them the tools they need to be good drivers but that we also want them to do their part. In short, in the discussions we had with the witness I just mentioned, we heard that exploitation has no place in our supply chain and that we have to act. We heard that putting an end to the Driver Inc. phenomenon means protecting vulnerable workers, restoring fairness and making trucking an occupation built on responsibility and pride. I think that's the best we can do as a committee.
I have just summarized the testimony of the first panel of witnesses from the meeting on October 7, 2025. Given the richness of that testimony, I thought I had heard everything there was on the topic, but I hadn't. The story was just getting started. On October 7, as part of the testimony of the second panel of witnesses, we met Steve Bourgeois. I remember it like it was yesterday. He's a licensed consultant and trainer, and he testified as an individual. He didn't represent an organization, so he was somewhat free to say what he wanted.
Earlier, I told you about the testimony of a woman with 31 years of experience. Mr. Bourgeois told us that he had 34 years of experience. He also told us that there had been a 35% increase in accidents. Think about that and see how concerning it is that the number of accidents, often fatal, increased exponentially in 2023‑24.
I'll summarize the discussions that we had with him. The questions were excellent on both sides. The Bloc and the Conservatives asked excellent questions. The witness told us about his experience in Canada and the United States. He told us about the extreme conditions and explained how difficult things were. In a way, he presented himself as the spokesperson for a group of about 15,000 signatories of a petition. He said that this movement, which he had started, advocates for road safety, the dignity of truck drivers and the legitimacy of their profession. It's funny that this fourth witness was able to summarize in a single sentence everything the other witnesses had been calling for before him.
They aren't asking for the moon. It was a legitimate petition. It simply advocates for road safety, the dignity of truckers and the recognition of the legitimacy of their profession, not only for women, as I have mentioned, but for drivers in general. It was started by someone with 34 years of experience in the field who has taught drivers. The issues he shared with us are somewhat similar to what we heard from the other witnesses, but he added some nuances.
First, he told us about ghost drivers, who are illegal drivers without a licence, insurance and training, on whom we have no information until they're caught. It has gone that far. It's scary. They get behind the wheel of trucks that carry extremely heavy, dangerous or poorly secured loads, when they have no theoretical or practical knowledge. It really isn't right to break the law in so many ways, and it puts the lives of family members at risk.
When he told us about this practice, I almost fell off my chair. He showed us not only that this problem was real, but also that it was growing. I thought there had been a reduction in the number of people who drive impaired, what with awareness campaigns. I thought it was hard to get a driver's licence these days. However, I have learned that you can get one in 24 or 48 hours, that there are drivers who drive illegally and exploit the system at every turn, and that these practices are on the rise. The entire ecosystem I have been talking to you about has been weakened by companies using the Driver Inc. scheme to circumvent safety standards.
This has serious consequences. As we heard from the witness, fatal accidents have increased by 35%, and that data is from 2023‑24. There's also the exploitation of immigrants in precarious situations, who are afraid of being sent back to their countries. They have a job, and, for them, that's already better than what would await them in their countries. My riding has hundreds of foreign workers on farms, in lawn care companies and in various industries. I meet with these workers every year, and I know that they're extremely proud to come and work in Canada. For them, it's a privilege. The last thing they want to do is upset their employer or not meet the standard that's in place when they arrive. They don't know any other standards. That standard is to take their truck and get a licence, since they had one elsewhere.
Personally, I'm not even able to transfer my licence in a number of fields. A francophone doctor can't even leave France to come and work in a hospital in Quebec if they don't have a licence to practise in Canada and Quebec. There's an agreement, but there are exams to pass and a justification to provide. For drivers arriving from abroad, their licences aren't verifiable. That's what the witnesses said. When it comes to doctors, we can check all the training they have received and their specialties and adapt them to the Canadian and Quebec systems. However, when it comes to drivers, they're taken as they are, they're given a little piece of paper, they're made to take a driving test for the class 1 licence, and they take to the road, even though they have trouble reading the signs in French and English. Imagine the serious consequences that can have.
This witness, who has 34 years of experience, has shown us that this practice represents unfair competition for compliant companies. Each of the four witnesses talked about this unfair competition. We have a chance to respond, talk about it and work with our analysts to come up with recommendations. The Bloc Québécois already has a list of recommendations, and I'm sure the Conservatives also have a list of good recommendations, so we could work as a team and talk about it together. I'm not sure that all of the Bloc's recommendations meet our standards, according to our analysts, who may feel that some of them could lead to court challenges because they encroach on provincial jurisdictions. However, we could deal with them one at a time, consult our experts, ask our clerks to do some research and work with our analysts to come up with recommendations.
Today, the best opportunity we had to move forward was to adopt the amendment that we wanted to propose for the Bloc Québécois motion. It repeated the motion in its entirety. Its sole purpose was to remove the request to produce all the departments' correspondence on this matter. However, I wasn't even able to propose it, because the Conservatives and the Bloc, once again, formed a coalition and challenged the chair's ruling to prevent me from doing so. We then gave them the opportunity to take the floor to move the amendment themselves. All they had to do was put forward the amendment and take credit for it. I don't even want them to use it in the same way as the Liberals; I just want us to finish this study.
Conservative
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna, BC
I thought you said there was no amendment on the floor.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna, BC
Now I find out, from listening to him, that there is.
Liberal
Liberal
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna, BC
Ah. It's the one that actually doesn't exist, that we've settled and that he just continually talks about.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
He's now talking about the importance of re-evaluating this in the hope that we can find a solution, Mr. Albas.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna, BC
I think if he were to bring back a motion on that, Mr. Chair, you would find it out of order because we've already disposed of that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
I hope that Mr. Lauzon is able to convince all members to re-evaluate our positions on these issues.
Correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Lauzon. I can't put words in your mouth, sir.
Liberal
Stéphane Lauzon Liberal Argenteuil—La Petite-Nation, QC
On your point of order, if you tell me that I can bring it back the same way it was before, and the Bloc says the same thing, I will bring it back.
Conservative
Dan Albas Conservative Okanagan Lake West—South Kelowna, BC
We've already disposed of it.
I just don't see why the member continues to refer to business that cannot be brought back.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Peter Schiefke
Mr. Lauzon, I would encourage you to speak to the motion at hand, sir.
