Transport Committee on Oct. 7th, 2025

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Sydney—Glace Bay, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the witnesses for being here and for your testimony.

Ms. Couture and Ms. Walker, you're truck drivers. It was only, for many Canadians, during COVID that we realized how much we rely on you and how essential you are. I want to say thank you for everything you do, and, of course, to the advocates, as well.

This will be basically a nod-type of question for many of you, because I have a few questions. When you have a committee like this, you devise your questions beforehand. Then you hear testimony, and you scrap those questions and go for the testimony questions.

I think it was referenced in 2022 in the fall economic statement that the government committed about $26 million over five years to ESDC to take stronger action on misclassification and conduct more audits. Understanding that this is a complex issue, was that, in your opinion, a decent move to move forward?

A nod from anybody would suffice.

[A voice]

Yes.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Sydney—Glace Bay, NS]

Would you all agree that it's constructive?

[Stephen Laskowski]

I would say it's constructive and it's helpful, but it doesn't go near the level of this problem.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Sydney—Glace Bay, NS]

That's a fair point.

CRA and ESDC signed an information-sharing arrangement in March 2025 to enhance enforcement in the federally regulated trucking sector.

Again, is that under the category of constructive?

[Stephen Laskowski]

It is constructive, but long overdue.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Sydney—Glace Bay, NS]

All right. Those were two items that the Conservatives voted against. I find that interesting.

I want to go into questions with respect to roles and responsibilities.

Ms. Splinter, how much of a role does the federal government play in regulating the industry? You spoke to this to some degree, but I wonder if you could unpack that, knowing that we have a limited amount of time and I have some more questions for you.

[Angela Splinter]

I just want to clarify something: Do you want to know how much of a role they have in regulating Driver Inc., or in other aspects? With Driver Inc., what the CTA has been lobbying the government on is with the CRA. They see the issue being around tax evasion.

I spoke to other issues that are happening broadly from an HR perspective and how it's impacting our workforce. Getting into specifics on the regulation piece gets me outside of my mandate and what I do at Trucking HR Canada. I think that would be better directed, perhaps, to the Canadian Trucking Alliance.

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Sydney—Glace Bay, NS]

Can we go to them?

[Stephen Laskowski]

Specifically with regard to the CRA and the taxation issue, this is complicated, but we can simplify it. The CRA has committed to bringing back T4As, but it needs to happen now. Fourteen years is long enough. Step one is you bring that back.

Step two is the personal services business model. It was studied by the CRA, and Jonathan has been involved in that and can provide a little bit more detail. Simply put, the CRA has discovered that we have a big problem with PSBs. Trucking is our number one problem, so the question from the CTA is this: Why hasn't action occurred? Why did the fall economic statement say that the CRA was going to give us answers in the 2023 budget when there has been silence ever since, while the crisis grows?

You can see it in the larger document, toward the end: it is billions of dollars; we have costed it. The CRA has been provided these documents. You are looking at between $1 billion and $5 billion, depending on how you want to cut it. As for government, as we know right now, Prime Minister Carney is leading our nation in trade and also said we have to limit expenses. We are here, as an industry, to give you $5 billion to clean our industry up. Why hasn't the CRA taken us up on our offer?

[Mike Kelloway, Liberal, Sydney—Glace Bay, NS]

I appreciate the answer to that question.

This would be a question for you, but also perhaps for some of the other folks who are here.

One thing that was brought up in the testimony was a national trucking credentialing system. I want to unpack that a bit and get a sense of it. Is that the federal government playing a larger role in regulating the industry? Should the government take back some of the oversight of the industry that it had, I think, during the eighties? Are they the same, or are they two different things? Are you looking for the federal government to take over more of the oversight, or is this something different in terms of the national credentialing system?

[Shelley Walker]

The national credential is different. You were talking about the eighties, and that was before deregulation, which is a totally different scenario from what we face today with Driver Inc.

Every province is doing its own thing when it comes to transportation, and it needs federal mandate oversight. The federal mandate for 103.5 hours is not enough. We need drivers to be encompassed more. Part of this is not only addressing the issues with truck training across the province but it is addressing Driver Inc., it is addressing forced labour and it is addressing human trafficking. It's every person in the industry who is involved, as well as government, and our provincial and federal counterparts.

It needs to be a team approach. That's the only way we're going to change it, because we have 13 provinces and territories that don't talk to each other.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much.

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

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. Their testimony is truly enlightening, and these things deserve to be highlighted. That's why we wanted to move forward with this study.

I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you that yesterday we held a press conference with stakeholders from the trucking industry. There were 10 to 15 companies present, in addition to national associations. They mobilized, mobilized hard, to be there because it's a matter of life and death for them. It's a matter of life and death not only for legitimate businesses, but also for people on the road.

I find it absolutely astounding that the government has yet to acknowledge this. So far, it seems to have remained silent, and chosen to be wilfully blind to the situation.

Mr. Laskowski, how many meetings have you had with the government on this?

[Stephen Laskowski]

I've lost count of the number of meetings I've had with the government, with Jonathan and Geoffrey. We've been lobbying this issue officially since 2018. The government has been very responsive in granting us meetings. We've had multiple meetings.

The issue is whether we're going to get some action. I believe you would have heard that from the carriers you're dealing with.

This is a complicated issue. We're a mature organization and complicated issues take time, but not seven years.

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

If you've lost track of the meetings, that means that the government is well aware of the problem and has been informed of solutions that could be put in place to solve it.

As you mentioned, in its 2022 economic statement, the government said, in a way, that it understood the problem and took note of it, since it wanted to put measures in place to solve it. However, that commitment wasn't in budget 2023.

My question is twofold.

Do you know what happened to the amounts announced in the 2022 economic statement?

Did you get any explanation as to why the details weren't provided afterwards?

[Stephen Laskowski]

I want to clarify what happened and what didn't happen.

The money was given to the ministry of labour—ESDC—to enter an enforcement. That is an action and it is a good step forward, to be quite honest with you. We're thankful for it, but it's like giving us an umbrella in a hurricane. We need a lot more enforcement than that.

What didn't happen was the commitment in that economic statement that we would get a resolution from CRA.

Folks, this isn't complicated. I'm not trying to be dismissive or look argumentative. It's really simple. Bring back the T4As, which you've had on moratorium for 14 years, and start enforcing the personal services businesses, which you've studied. They committed to enforcing PSBs and then they uncommitted.

Maybe Jonathan, if the committee will allow, can explain the study that took place.

Mr. Chair, would you allow my representative to explain what happened here?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

It would be up to Mr. Barsalou-Duval. It is his time to give.

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

Mr. Chair, how much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

You have two and a half minutes left, Mr. Barsalou‑Duval.

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

All right.

I'll be sharing my time with Mr. Blackham.

[Jonathan Blackham, Director, Policy and Public Affairs, Canadian Trucking Alliance]

Thanks.

There's the T4A issue, there's the PSB issue and they're related. When CRA studied the PSB issue, they found gross non-compliance.

When the personal services business classification was first introduced, trucking was nearly non-existent. It was something that professionals used—IT and that sort of thing. This was the eighties and nineties. Now we fast-forward to today and we find that trucking is by far the number one user of the model.

When CRA studied it, they identified on average just under $17,000 per person in tax evasion. They identified trucking as the number one user.

Within that, they also found the reasoning. When speaking with people in the sector and asking why they were engaging in this, it was all the answers the industry had always said. They talked about how their employer told them to do it. They talked about how they were told it was a condition of employment. They were told it was a grey area for taxation. They were told it was some safe haven in the tax world. Of course, none of this was true. CRA knows all of this.

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

Thank you for your answer.

What I take away from that is the number you mentioned. You explained that close to $70,000 wasn't taxed for every driver who incorporated. That's money lost to the public purse.

Do I understand correctly?

[Jonathan Blackham]

It was $17,000 per driver.

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

All right.