Thank you for inviting me today, Mr. Chair and committee members.
My name is Ken Adams, and I am chairman of the board for the Truck Training Schools Association of Ontario. We represent over 40 independent regulated schools committed to safety, compliance and excellence and have done so for the last 30 years.
While I've only been in this industry the past 11 years, I've seen a great decline in the quality and the treatment of drivers. I served as a member of the Toronto Police Service and spent my first eight years of duty in a traffic unit, and this is where my passion for road safety comes from.
I currently own and operate a truck training school right here in Ottawa, Crossroads Truck and Career Academy. I sit on various committees with the Ontario government and participate in stakeholder consultations with the Ministry of Transportation.
We're here because Driver Inc. misclassification didn't start on the highway; it began in the classroom. We've seen carriers buy or influence schools to fast-track them through bare-bones programs, undermine the provincial licensing standards and shift the training liability away from these carriers. This isn't theory. Our members lose revenue, accreditation and staff to these corner-cutting outfits while public safety and the students' well-being are all suffering. Good schools are closing their doors and even more non-compliant schools enter through those doors.
It's a systematic threat to training schools. There is a conflict of interest: Carrier-owned or affiliated schools exist to feed cheap, unprotected “contractors” into fleets, never to produce a qualified or safe driver. They compress their curriculums. Key modules—hours of service, vehicle inspection protocols, emergency response and air brake certification—are all truncated or completely skipped.
There is document fraud and bribery. Records are falsified, examiners are being bribed and unqualified graduates emerge with full licenses to operate 80,000-pound trucks on our city streets and highways. I address every single one of my classes to let them know that they are driving killing machines. What they hit, they destroy. This is a serious job, and we can't have under-trained or fast-tracked people out on the roads.
Offshore payments and exploitation of the students are happening. Students will wire tuition via WhatsApp to anonymous accounts, and they'll find themselves trapped in labour trafficking conditions. Make no mistake about it: Labour trafficking is happening in trucking.
There are real-world consequences, like safety risks. Under-trained drivers mean more incidents, including, unfortunately, fatalities; roadside defects and compliance violations; rising costs for the honest carriers; and the endangerment of every single road user.
We have erosion of quality providers. Reputable schools cannot compete on price or speed, and we're risking losing our best instructors and our best schools.
This affects workforce integrity. Newcomers who drive our industry growth are misclassified, underpaid, not paid overtime and told that they owe the company for their immigration costs and training. They are being pushed to work well over the hours of service that they should be working—again, endangering everybody's lives—and they're too fearful to speak up. Also, they're stripped of any kind of health benefits, or any benefits, for that matter.
What are the solutions? One is ownership transparency. Require all licensed schools to publicly disclose any controlling interest and related party ties to carriers. Mandate unannounced provincial audits of curriculum delivery, equipment condition, instructor credentials and student files. Partner with the CRA to trace irregular tuition flows and offshore payments.
A national trucking credential was mentioned before. We need to adopt a harmonized curriculum with an embedded eight-hour labour trafficking response module to protect our newcomers. Issue a blockchain-secured safety passport linking verified hours, audit history and real-time verification and trainee protections. Mandate orientation on labour rights, tax laws and compliant mechanisms to support these newcomers. Form a joint federal-provincial industry body including labour programs the CRA, Transport Canada, WTFC, TTSAO and CTA to share data on these repeat offenders and emerging risks.
This committee has a rare opportunity to end the upstream enablers of Driver Inc. Implement these measures to help protect the students, and we can have safe roads.