Transport Committee on Jan. 26th, 2026

[Janet Campbell, President and Chief Executive Officer, Joy Smith Foundation]

Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today.

Our organization was founded by Joy Smith, a former member of Parliament herself. During her time in Parliament, she successfully introduced two private members' bills that amended the Criminal Code of Canada to strengthen Canada's response to human trafficking. That legislative work helped lay the foundation for how human trafficking is defined and prosecuted in our country today.

For more than 30 years, Joy Smith and our foundation have supported survivors, trained frontline professionals and worked with governments at the federal, provincial and municipal levels. We work closely with law enforcement, service providers and international partners to help ensure that Canada's response reflects both lived experience and established legal standards. To date we have supported more than 7,000 survivors of sex trafficking and forced labour.

Consistent throughout our work, human trafficking is often misunderstood while it hides in plain sight. Under the UN Palermo protocol, which Canada has ratified, human trafficking consists of three elements—an act; a means, such as coercion or abuse of vulnerability; and a purpose of exploitation. The International Labour Organization further operationalizes this through 11 indicators of forced labour, which are widely used by governments and courts around the world to assess risk. When we apply that framework, we see that labour trafficking often emerges not from a single illegal act but from systems that concentrate power on one side of the employment relationship and that remove meaningful choice from a worker. Our foundation is seeing a steady increase in forced labour cases and indicators coming to our office, particularly in sectors where immigration dependency and misclassification intersect.

This is where the trucking industry enters this discussion for us today. In 2024 we launched an awareness campaign, called Trafficking Report, in response to the patterns we were seeing in the trucking industry in particular. As this committee has heard, Driver Inc. undermines labour standards, distorts competition and erodes road safety. Those impacts are very real. This is impacting real lives, as we heard today in the heartbreaking stories from the courageous witnesses earlier. What our work at the foundation adds to this conversation is an explanation of how, in certain conditions, those same structures can meet internationally recognized thresholds for forced labour. That risk increases significantly when misclassification is combined with immigration dependency. When a worker's income, housing, legal status and pathway to permanent residency are all tied to a single employer, the balance of power shifts. When that worker is also indebted through recruitment or training fees, is isolated from community supports, and is unable to change employers without serious consequences, reporting abuse becomes unsafe. In international terms, this is what abuse of vulnerability looks like.

Based on our work, the patterns we see in the trucking sector include debt bondage through recruitment costs, deception about wages and working conditions, withholding of documents, threats related to immigration status, physical violence, systemic wage theft, unpaid overtime, excessive hours, isolation and unsafe conditions. When multiple indicators of coercion are present, this creates an environment where forced labour thrives regardless of whether the industry itself is legal or regulated. This helps explain why enforcement alone has struggled. Workers often cannot report safely, remedies are slow or unenforced, and companies can dissolve and re-emerge while workers are left without wages or status.

I want to be clear that this is not about casting suspicion on the entire trucking industry. It's about aligning Canada's trucking, labour and immigration systems with the international standards and Criminal Code provisions that Canada already has committed to uphold. Canada does have some strong laws. Of course more work can be done, but what matters now is ensuring that our systems do not unintentionally enable the human trafficking that those laws were designed to prevent.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I welcome your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you, Ms. Campbell.

We'll now turn it over directly to our first questioner, MP Seeback.

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

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming today to talk about this issue.

I really want to thank the CCRSA. You're from my riding, and you do such great work and advocacy in trying to bring this issue.... It's impressive that you've been able to bring it to the local and provincial levels, and, now, here to the national level. Your passionate hard work is going to be very beneficial as we try to figure out the solution to all of these things.

Having listened to what I've heard today, and having had conversations with you, it seems to me that this is not just a one-level-of-government challenge. There are multiple things that have to happen at multiple levels of government. It would be great if the federal government took leadership on that, but could you describe what you think would be the way forward at all levels of government? Do you have an idea of what that would look like?

[Amanda Corbett]

This has to be an ongoing conversation, with all levels of government participating—residents as well.

In our particular case, we live in Ontario and we've tried to have many conversations with the Ontario government. Unfortunately, not a lot of listening is happening, or, if they are listening, they're not taking a lot of action.

There really needs to be an understanding that this is across Canada. This is a problem for all provinces. I do think, quite frankly, that there's a lot happening in Ontario that's also causing problems in other provinces. There really needs to be an ongoing conversation and willingness for each level of government to do what's within their purview to actually make real change so that residents living in their communities can see an improvement.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

If I were to look at your statement and what I've heard today, it sounds like the tax part of it is one element, certainly with the Driver Inc. aspect of this. You'd say that's a big part of the problem.

[Amanda Corbett]

Yes, most definitely.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

You'd be very supportive of finding some new way, through the tax code, audit and compliance, to deal with cracking down on the companies that are operating under the Driver Inc. model.

[Amanda Corbett]

I'll let Franca jump in on that.

[Franca Pisani]

Undoing the T4As is just not enough. They're easy to manipulate, and, if somebody has a few family members, split up among everybody.

The thing is, if you do a T5018, which is something similar, which is happening in the construction industry and had cleaned up the underground economy.... Basically, if you have the shipper itself give a T5018 to the brokers or the carriers, and then they, the broker/carrier, issue the T4A to the driver, you have something to audit with. If the carrier/broker sends a T5018 that says, "You've made so much money, but this is all you've dished out in T4As”, there's a problem. It's just a cross-audit, and that really helped the construction industry.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

When you also talked about the licensing requirement, my understanding was that a significant part of the problem has also been people obtaining licences without actually taking the course, some fraudulent schools.... I would take it that these are part of this problem that need to be cracked down on as well.

[Carmela Palkowski]

Absolutely. The other problem is that they've actually caught a number of fraudulent schools, but what happened to those individuals who obtained licences from those schools?

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

I guess you would support that those licences be revoked, and they would have to retest at an—

[Carmela Palkowski]

Absolutely.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

If we follow this down to the municipal level, there's also a problem, because a lot of the drivers who are operating under Driver Inc., who obtained these licences from these fake driving schools, are probably operating out of an illegal truck yard.

[Amanda Corbett]

It's very likely that's happening, yes.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

What do you think the solution to that is?

[Amanda Corbett]

Well, there are lot of solutions. However, I think that the main one is for the Province of Ontario and, perhaps, other provinces that are dealing with this to actually act on some of the recommendations that have been made, both through us and through our municipal governments as well. They need the ability to block the driveways of these particular properties; to drastically increase the fines that are given because, right now, it's really just a cost of doing business—a few hundred dollars is completely irrelevant when you're making tens to hundreds of thousands a day—and also the ability to put those fines on the title of the property so that they can't just sell to a family member or change the name of the company and wash their hands of the situation.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

If the federal minister of transportation were here, I take it that you would urge him to make this a huge priority for the safety of all Canadians, to take some leadership on this and bring provinces online.

[Amanda Corbett]

Yes. I would say that, given the lack of response that we're having from the Ontario government and the fact that this problem is happening all across Canada, if there was some federal action that could happen that forces the provinces to either actually do something or take some sort of a policy stance, that would be helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much.

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

[Will Greaves, Liberal, Victoria, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for joining us this morning as we continue this important discussion.

My question is for Ms. Aujla.

As you noted during your remarks, safety standards are set at the federal level, but we know that, as with most rules, the standards that are set are really only as good as the enforcement on the ground. In this case, the enforcement is largely undertaken by provincial and municipal partners. I'm wondering if you could speak to what you've heard from drivers operating in Peel Region—or from others with whom you've interacted—in terms of how often they are seeing or interacting with law enforcement or provincial officials or inspectors who are conducting roadside inspections or, rather, audits that might help mitigate some of these unsafe conditions.

[Navneet Aujla]

The majority of drivers that are calling us or are a part of Justice for Truck Drivers are federally regulated truck drivers. There's actually a lot that the federal government could be doing in order to make sure that safety and labour standards are followed. A lot of it starts from the fact that when drivers are raising issues and filing complaints with regard to the Canada Labour Code, there is very little effective enforcement. It's grossly underfunded at the federal level. What it signals to companies is that they can actually engage in labour violations without consequences and without any meaningful fines. It tells the drivers that they have nowhere to turn to. A lot of the issues that we're seeing are because companies are being allowed to cut corners by not following labour laws properly and because drivers don't have a place that they can turn to in order to actually enforce their rights.

It is a safety issue when we talk about drivers' rights and making sure that they can access their protections through the Canada Labour Code. That's why we're saying that enforcement from that level is actually going to solve a lot of these issues. It's not just misclassification. It's not just something that should be examined through the CRA lens. It's something where the Canada Labour Code needs to be effectively enforced so that drivers can get their rights enforced.

[Will Greaves, Liberal, Victoria, BC]

Thank you for that response. I appreciate that. That's certainly a fair point.

What you're describing is a situation in which a driver has proactively made a complaint or filed some kind of complaint with the federal government, which is certainly relevant.

In terms of their experiences of actually driving and being on the job, can you speak a little bit about the other kinds of interactions they may be having? For example, how frequently do roadside audits occur or being pulled over by police, as well as inspections and that kind of activity? Is that something you're hearing about from your drivers as well?

[Navneet Aujla]

Yes, they do commonly get inspected. They do get pulled over on scales. Again, they face a lot of pressure from employers to drive vehicles that are not properly maintained or to drive hours over what is allowed. They have nowhere to turn to in order to even let somebody know that the company is pushing them this way. Basically, the whole responsibility falls on them to refuse that. Then the employer simply says that they're not going to give them any more work. Again, it comes down to their being able to enforce their rights and protections in order to be able to say no to unsafe work or to driving a vehicle that's not maintained without fear of losing their job or fear of financial retaliation.

[Will Greaves, Liberal, Victoria, BC]

Okay. Thank you for that.

That actually segues into my next question, which is for Ms. Campbell.

Thank you for being with us today, Ms. Campbell.

We know that newcomers and international workers are often targeted by bad actors and by companies with some dubious practices for recruitment. I'm wondering if you could elaborate on that. What are some the promises or commitments that are made to lure individuals into working in unsafe conditions in the trucking sector?