Vehicles drive on Highway 401 westbound in Kingston, Ont., on Jan. 11, 2019. Lars Hagberg/The Canadian Press
A new report from Ontario’s auditor general identifies “serious” gaps in testing, training, and oversight in Ontario’s commercial truck driver training and licensing system, saying that this creates a “safety risk for all drivers on Ontario’s roads.”
The report from Ontario Auditor General Shelley Spence found multiple cases of private truck-driving schools failing to offer the full mandatory Entry Level Training (ELT) to would-be drivers, telling students to sign off on training hours they hadn’t done, along with “falsified” student records.
The report also points to provincial DriveTest centres giving inconsistent road tests and various lapses in oversight of the province’s commercial trucking industry.
“Without an effective process in place to enforce compliance with all mandatory training, these drivers continue to operate even though their training may fall below the provincial ELT standard. This poses a safety risk for all drivers on Ontario’s roads,” the report reads.
The audit notes that while large commercial trucks only make up roughly 3 percent of vehicles on Ontario roads, they were involved in 12 percent of deadly collisions between 2019 to 2023. It goes on to cite Ontario government data on collisions showing truckers were at fault in approximately 46 percent of the roughly 128,000 collisions involving large commercial trucks between 2015 to 2025.
The report comes amid heightened scrutiny into trucking safety in Canada and the United States after a series of deadly accidents.
Quebec’s chief coroner announced a public inquiry into the issue last year following an increase in fatal truck collisions, saying evidence shows that inexperienced and illegally hired drivers are contributing to the rising death toll.
The Truck Training Schools Association of Ontario last year submitted a brief to a parliamentary committee saying that a rise in poorly trained truck drivers and the exploitation of foreign workers operating improperly maintained vehicles are making Canadian roads more dangerous.
Missing Training, Improper Testing
Ontario requires would-be commercial truckers seeking their Class A licence to complete 103.5 hours of training including on-road driving, classes, and manoeuvre practice done at the truckyard.
