(TORONTO, May 15, 2026) — The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) is calling on the Council of Ministers Responsible for Transportation and Highway Safety to apply findings from a new Ontario Auditor General report to enact sweeping national safety reforms at their upcoming fall meetings.

In a letter sent to the Council this week, CTA President and CEO Stephen Laskowski stated that while the Auditor General’s Special Report focuses on Ontario, it exposes critical enforcement gaps and systemic vulnerabilities that exist across all Canadian jurisdictions. The damning report explicitly validates the CTA’s long-standing warnings regarding the direct link between underground labour models and the deterioration of the commercial trucking sector’s safety performance.

“The Ontario Auditor General’s report provides objective, empirical data that shatters the misconception that the ‘Driver Inc.’ model is strictly a tax or labour issue,” said Laskowski. “The data proves an undeniable link between tax-evasion schemes and a 108-percent spike in commercial driving infractions, including the falsification of hours-of-service and maintenance records. This lawlessness is actively compromising public safety on our shared national highways.”

CTA highlighted two critical areas from the auditor general’s report that demand an immediate, unified national response from Canada’s transportation ministers:

• Eliminating Jurisdictional Blind Spots (Recommendation 11): The report highlights the dangerous lack of real-time data sharing between provinces, allowing non-compliant operators to exploit provincial borders to evade safety enforcement. Pointing to jurisdictions like B.C. and Quebec as leaders in integrated oversight, the CTA is urging the Council to establish a harmonized national framework where an infraction or license suspension in one province instantly triggers enforcement across all borders.
• Starving the Market for Substandard Driving Schools: The audit exposed massive fraud within commercial driver training programs. The CTA emphasizes that substandard driving schools only exist to serve non-compliant fleets. Lawful, professional carriers refuse to hire uncertified or poorly trained drivers, leaving only Driver Inc. operators as the primary job pathway for these unsafe drivers. 

As the Council prepares to discuss and approve highly anticipated policy recommendations  from industry and governments this fall, the CTA is urging ministers to reject incremental changes and instead deliver strong, unyielding sweeping regulatory reforms. Specifically, the CTA is calling for mandated, real-time interprovincial data links and aggressive, and sustained multi-agency enforcement strategies that treat Driver Inc. compliance as a primary indicator of high-risk road safety violations.

“The professional, law-abiding trucking industry stands ready to assist all ministers to implement these necessary changes,” says Laskowski. “Ministers now have the exact safety and Driver Inc. data required to justify appropriate reform to protect Canada’s infrastructure and the motoring public.”

The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) represents a federation of provincial trucking associations, encompassing thousands of carriers, owner-operators, and industry suppliers across Canada.

Marco Beghetto

VP, Communications & New Media

555 Dixon Rd. Toronto

416-249-7401 ext 238

Marco.beghetto@ontruck.org