Transport Committee on Oct. 7th, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Seymour.

Thank you very much, Mr. Barsalou‑Duval.

Next, we'll go to Mr. Lewis.

The floor is yours. You have five minutes, sir.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the committee.

Thank you also to the witnesses. It has been really good testimony in both the first and the second hour this morning. It is certainly a vital discussion here today. After 10 years of Liberal inaction, quite frankly, we have communities that are at risk and we have Canadian families being seriously hurt or killed on Canadian roads, so this discussion is very important.

My riding of Essex is right next to the busiest international border crossing in North America. I have an awful lot of transport traffic that goes back and forth across the 401 corridor between our neighbours in Michigan and our country.

Mr. Adams, my first question is for you, sir. By the way, thank you for your service with the Toronto police department.

You had mentioned that about 103.5 hours is the industry standard for training.

[Ken Adams]

That's the minimum standard allowed in this province.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Your company offers 200 hours of training.

How many hours does a person need to sit in the classroom and then how many hours would a person need to sit in a cab with an instructor to be safe on the roads, in your opinion?

[Ken Adams]

In my opinion, a minimum of 200 hours. In classroom, a minimum of 40 hours.

My friend beside me says that you need to know your logbooks. We don't use logbooks. We use the ELDs now. And as is well known to everyone, you can go through a back door and change them around. The ELD was there to remove the logbook issue where you could have two and three...but ELDs can be also compromised.

So we have ELD training. We have load securement training. We have laws and regulations, weights and limitations, safety compliance, and map and trip planning because a GPS doesn't always work.

This is the base that these students need before they even touch a truck.

Then when we get out there, they need to be behind the wheel. They need to be driving the truck. They need to be backing it up, inspecting it, making sure it is safe for the road. My minimum program at my particular school is 200 hours. The next level up is 250. But again, we're not even seeing 103.5 hours being done. It's “get them through as fast as we can, get them on the road, make us money”.

How do people run off the road and flip trucks on a beautiful sunny day? If we get a massive snowstorm, okay, but not on a beautiful sunny day. There's a lack of training, and it's serious.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

In your opinion does MELT work? Does it work in Ontario? Does it work in Canada?

[Ken Adams]

In my opinion, MELT was a good starting point, but it certainly is not enough.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Adams.

Mr. Seymour, I found it absolutely gut-wrenching and astonishing when you mentioned that just a couple of years ago you had to throttle back your company 25% in a time when we need more transport trucks delivering our goods. In my region of Essex there are so many greenhouses that we send 90% of our produce to the States.

Does your company have an issue in that the Canadian MELT is not compatible in the United States and/or vice versa? Being from a cross-border community, I'm just curious about whether your drivers run into this problem in the United States?

[Mark Seymour]

Our drivers don't. We're a company that will hire a newly licenced driver, but we spend a tremendous amount of time researching what school they went to and certainly Mr. Adams' school is one. In fact, my son went to Ken's school.

We accredit the schools where they come from. Then we invest another three to six weeks of training in that newly licenced driver, which would account for hundreds more hours. Our drivers don't have an issue when they are in the United States because they're safe and they're compliant and they're well trained.

Now accidents happen. Things can happen, but when audited and when checked and when in an accident, God forbid, we don't have a problem because we've provided due diligence and it doesn't cause a problem for us.

[Chris Lewis, Conservative, Essex, ON]

Thank you to the witnesses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Next we'll go to Mr. Kelloway.

The floor is yours, sir. You have five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the witnesses for being here today.

Like my colleague to my right, my career predominantly was involved in training and development at the Nova Scotia Community College. When I hear examples of people getting their licence for a particular level in terms of truck driving in two days, in three days, my jaw drops.

Throughout this testimony we talked about training, safety, information sharing and enforcement, which are predominantly if not solely focused on the provinces. When I think of training and development in particular, I want to ask a couple of questions.

It's the provincial responsibility. Mr. Adams, you talked about the fact that, and I don't want to put words into your mouth, there's not enough enforcement, there are not enough people doing due diligence to ensure that in no world should you complete a program in two days to drive a truck. Two weeks? You said 200 hours, I think.

[Ken Adams]

It's two weeks to complete.

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

Mr. Adams, I'll start with you, and then I'll go to Mr. Bourgeois.

Give us some examples of training provincially. What needs to be tightened? We can get into money, because, obviously, everything comes down to investments. If we want to have skilled people, we need skilled training and skilled enforcement to keep people safe.

Can you drill down, in terms of training, into what could be done provincially? What can the federal government do to strengthen the responsibility of the provinces? Should we do that?

[Ken Adams]

We talked about a national training standard. Every trainer across this province should have to be certified, and there should be a database for that certification. At least we would know that person had been trained properly. We need to get more investigators, or hidden investigators like we saw on Marketplace, into these schools where there are constant complaints.

There is data out there. We know where the truck accidents are happening and who is driving. MELT requires every single school to enter, into a ministry database, that person's name before they are allowed to take the road test, meaning that everyone knows which school that person went to. If that school has a disproportionate number of people having accidents, then maybe there's a problem at that school.

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

Mr. Bourgeois, can you chime in on that?

[Steve Bourgeois]

It's exactly like he said. We need more hours, and we need some people to make sure they are doing what they're supposed to do. In MELT, they were just paying, doing some stuff and nobody was looking at them until they were found out. We have to do something more than that, provincially or federally. Maybe they have to do some spot checks, like he said, undercover or whatever. You can do whatever you need to. People are dying on the road right now, and we need to do something like that.

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

There are a couple of things that are striking for me, listening to this testimony, and they are around training and enforcement. If you have private or not-private trainers training people in eight hours when that should be at least a 200-hour program, there's a fundamental breakdown in terms of what the provincial government is doing.

That's not passing the buck. What could the federal government do to assist the provincial government? Is it more investment? Is it strategic investment in enforcement? Is it strategic investment in other types of programs? The reality is that the provincial government is responsible for it, but what would be some pathways to help if you had the pen, from a federal perspective?

[Ken Adams]

I would have a national training standard, and I would have some very severe penalties for the people who are violating this. There's an individual, right now, who killed a 35-year-old lady and her seven-year-old child, took off, left the country and just returned, and he's out on bail. We need some very strict laws and sentencing to stop it.

[Steve Bourgeois]

You could seize their passport and flag it at the airport to make sure they don't go back. They just caught one in the U.S. to bring him back to Quebec. He killed somebody in Quebec. He just came back. He walked to Mexico to get into the U.S. He did something wrong in California. He thought nobody would see him. They flew him back to Quebec to make sure he's going to comply in court.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Schiefke]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bourgeois.

Thank you, Mr. Adams.

Mr. Barsalou‑Duval, you now have the floor for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My colleagues opposite have talked a lot about the training responsibilities of Quebec or other provinces. I think talking about it is good because there's an important element to it.

I'd like to talk about the public data on the current situation regarding the number of trucking companies without employees. According to Statistics Canada, in Quebec, five years ago, there were about 9,000; today, there are about 11,000. In Ontario, there were about 30,000 five years ago and now there are 50,000. However, there are 2,000 more incorporated drivers in Quebec and 20,000 more in Ontario.

Obviously, some of those people may operate completely legally, but I think that shows the scope of the phenomenon. We also saw the Marketplace report, on CBC, which said that convenience training was clearly being given.

I'm going to link back to what I said earlier. Interprovincial transportation falls under federal jurisdiction, and the federal government delegates its authority to issue safety fitness certificates to provincial authorities. It could decide to take back that power in the case of a recalcitrant province where the phenomenon is concentrated. For example, it could decide to target Ontario by saying it will no longer have the right to issue safety certificates if it doesn't make necessary changes.

Mr. Bourgeois, do you think this could be a possible solution?

[Steve Bourgeois]

Yes, that would be a good solution. It could stop the hemorrhaging we're experiencing for as long as it takes to solve the problem.

Indeed, according to one survey, the number of this type of trucking company has increased significantly in Ontario.

With respect to traffic stops in Quebec, many of the vehicles impounded are from outside the province, including Ontario, due to issues with licences, plates, or invalid insurance.

So there's a problem. I wouldn't say that this is the case for everyone, but we're seeing a major problem in Ontario. Perhaps that should be monitored immediately, as should immigration. Those are the two things to look at in terms of what's going on.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Bourgeois.

Mr. Adams, the CBC's Marketplace report said that training could cost less than $1,000.

How much does it cost for you to train?

Do you think that, for $1,000, we can provide real training?

[Ken Adams]

To take a 200-hour course at my school is $10,000. There is no way. That wouldn't pay for the fuel in the truck. That wouldn't pay my trainer's wages for that time. It's impossible.