The provincial government will inspect trucking schools after a damning auditor general’s report
Alongside glaring safety issues, the report found that a quarter of private trucking colleges had never been visited by government personnel
Ontario’s Minister of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security, Nolan Quinn, told reporters today that the province will inspect all its truck driver training colleges, after an auditor general’s report published yesterday sounded the alarm on terrifying safety deficiencies.
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The auditor general’s report found that not only were some students completing just 57 per cent of required training hours and not taught essential maneuvers such as left-hand turning, but that a quarter of Ontario’s 205 private trucking colleges had never been visited by anyone from the government.
“Since the audit started, we’ve inspected another 14 agencies, and I expect in the next six weeks for all our institutions to be audited,” Quinn said at Queen’s Park, as reported by Global News.
“It has been on our radar,” he continued. “Our expectations are, in the next six weeks, all of the schools will be inspected.”
Large commercial trucks make up three per cent of vehicles on Ontario roads, the report said, but accounted for twelve per cent of vehicles involved in fatal collisions between 2019 and 2023.
Nolan said that going forward, the province’s trucking schools will be inspected annually.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
