Ontario’s upcoming commercial truck training overhaul will fail to improve highway safety unless the province heavily enforces the new curriculum against rogue colleges, warns the head of a major provincial driving school association.
Philip Fletcher, president of the Truck Training Schools Association of Ontario (TTSAO), said he welcomes the province's new standard framework but stresses that formatting a new curriculum is only half the battle.
“The other side of this that will need to be done is the enforcement and oversight by the Ministry of Colleges and Universities,” he said.
Marco Beghetto, Vice President of Communications & New Media for both the Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) and the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA), agrees that classroom education is only part of the issue. He notes that the industry is currently facing an underground safety crisis driven by non-compliance.
"Over the past 10 years especially, we have sort of descended into an underground or underbelly of the industry that is based on non-compliance," he said. "We have been trying to compel governments at all levels, federal and provincial, to take the safety crisis seriously."
The regulatory crackdown follows an investigation by Ontario's Auditor General, which revealed several private career colleges were cutting corners on required training hours.
The audit concluded these gaps frequently left students without fundamental road skills.
In response, Minister of Transportation Prabmeet Sarkaria announced in a press release that the province will mandate a new, standardized curriculum for commercial drivers early next year.
According to the Ministry of Transportation, the upcoming framework introduces an integrity manager for driver testing, mandatory supervisor spot checks, and a strict six-month waiting period before Class G licence holders can attempt a Class A road test, starting Jan. 1, 2027.
Ministry officials stated that existing training gaps have already triggered stricter highway enforcement, interprovincial service disruptions, and an accelerated timeline for college inspections.
While Beghetto declined to comment on specific classroom training hours, he emphasized that whatever entry-level hours the province decides on should be tied to an endorsement-style licence.
This would restrict drivers to operating only the specific type of equipment they were trained on.
Beghetto pointed out critical gaps in roadside enforcement, noting that out of more than 20 roadside safety inspection facilities commonly known as way scales in Ontario, only three operate 24/7.
"What that clearly allows is for these unscrupulous carriers who don't want to play by the rules to just sort of do their scheduling based on when the scales are open, and then just go around them," he said.
Beghetto said oversight is lacking at the corporate level, revealing that 80 per cent of trucking companies in Ontario have never received a safety or facility inspection from the government.
He compared this to the food service sector, where every vendor from a restaurant to a hot dog cart outside the Rogers Centre requires a green sticker inspection to protect public health.
"Shouldn't we require at least that minimum standard for companies that put 80,000-pound vehicles on the road with our families?" Beghetto said.
Fletcher noted that while established organizations strictly adhere to safety rules to protect their credibility, many outlying, "rogue" schools have historically operated without adequate oversight.
According to TTSAO data, systemic training failures cause daily impacts for regular commuters, who face severe vehicle delays and increased traffic congestion.
Fletcher said the stakes are highest in Northern Ontario, where transport accidents on remote stretches like Highway 11/17 can entirely cut off travel between isolated communities.
This lack of compliance also places a heavy economic burden on legitimate carriers. Beghetto highlighted the widespread issue of "Driver Inc.," a misclassification scheme where trucking companies illegally treat employee drivers as independent contractors to avoid payroll obligations like tax, workers' compensation, and vacation pay.
"By cutting corners, they reduce their costs massively," Beghetto explained, noting that operators who obey labour laws and invest heavily in proper training are left at a competitive disadvantage.
To counter these hazards, Fletcher said the TTSAO actively pushed provincial regulators for the new six-month prerequisite. The goal is to ensure prospective operators gain sufficient road experience before facing Canada's toughest driving conditions.
“We wanted to make sure that that six-month eligibility period is to try to come close to having people experience a Canadian winter,” Fletcher said. “Especially if they're coming from a country where they haven't experienced snow or ice or any inclement conditions like that.”
While some industry analysts argue that the extensive 103-hour overhaul will drive up training costs for lower-income applicants, Fletcher dismissed concerns that the curriculum itself will create financial barriers.
Instead, he pointed to broader economic pressures, specifically volatile diesel prices, as the primary threat to future tuition costs.
Fletcher, drawing on his own past experience as a transport driver, believes proper preparation will ultimately solve the trucking industry's severe driver retention and chronic labor shortage problems.
“I think by graduating more confident and career-ready graduates that there's a better chance that they'll stick within the industry,” he said. “This kind of preparation will help to smooth that out.”
To truly address these systemic loopholes, Beghetto stresses that the province must target "chameleon carriers"—operators that get shut down or fined in one jurisdiction, only to reopen under a new name in another province.
He called for increased cross-provincial and cross-federal data sharing between agencies like the Canada Revenue Agency and provincial transportation ministries to create an active paper trail.
"We need a database that every agency that has a touchpoint with trucking can share," Beghetto said, ensuring the enforcement system is airtight across the country.
TTSAO and CTA officials concluded that because Canadian commercial licences are recognized across all provinces and the United States, uniform training and strong regional enforcement standards are a necessity for continental road safety.
