Earlier this week the Ontario Auditor General released her annual report, part of which dealt with the shortcomings she found in the area of commercial vehicle enforcement and safety. While the focus of the report is on trucks, buses are commercial vehicles and therefore also included in the blanket criticisms.
Much of the report deals with the lack of inspections and audits being done. It is also critical of the licencing and training system, particularly the lack of mandatory training in all classes of licences and the DCP program’s inherent conflict of interest in allowing participating commercial operators to issue licences to their own drivers.
Click here to view the full Commercial Vehicle Safety section of the Auditor’s report.
In its response to the Auditor, MTO has indicated it will review all of the areas and policies identified and implement changes where necessary. It’s early days yet and there is no immediate need for alarm. It’ll take a while just to do the reviews, but OMCA will be actively involved in the consultations with MTO around the items identified by the auditor as problem areas and we will keep you informed as changes are proposed or implemented.
For more information, contact Doug Switzer at doug@omca.com or Jennifer Fox at jennifer@omca.com.