After several weeks of deadlock in Ottawa, the Driver Inc. file has reached a turning point.
The work of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, stalled since November 6, will finally resume.
This will allow key witnesses to be heard as part of the study on this scheme, which affects both road safety and the integrity of the labour market.
As Xavier Barsalou-Duval explained on Truck Stop Quebec radio :
“The Liberals have ended their obstruction of the committee’s work, which had been going on since November 6. They must have had a revelation from the Holy Spirit, it seems, with the recent news in the Journal about their organizers who are close to Driver Inc.”
The ongoing study at the Transport Committee was launched by the Bloc Québécois, at the initiative of MP Barsalou-Duval, elected in the riding of Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères.
The adopted motion will open the door to hearing victims of accidents linked to the Driver Inc. model, a key step in understanding the human and economic impacts of the phenomenon.
Several provincial associations that had not yet been heard will now testify. Among them, the Caledon Community Road Safety Advocacy (CCRSA) Group, representing a community heavily exposed to the consequences of the scheme due to its geographic situation; the Joy Smith Foundation, which addresses human trafficking in the trucking industry; and Canada Post, which will also be called before parliamentarians.
Committee members are also demanding greater transparency from the government and from organizations involved in the debate.
According to Barsalou-Duval:
“The government will also have to provide us, within 60 days, with the documents and correspondence they have on non-compliance in trucking, and the CTOA will have to send us its list of members—this was also revoted.”
This step is considered essential to obtain a complete picture of internal communications regarding enforcement, as well as to better understand who is actually behind the groups involved in the controversy.
The CTOA (Canada Truck Operators Association) is central to this saga. The organization claims to represent drivers registered under the Driver Inc. model. The proximity between certain CTOA leaders and the Liberal Party has drawn significant media and political attention, further reinforcing the need for parliamentarians to obtain the association’s official membership list.
This debate is unfolding in an unusual international context. The Trump administration has recently urged the Liberal government of Mark Carney to “take concrete action” to curb the Driver Inc. phenomenon. U.S. diplomats have argued that the rise of poorly trained drivers, misclassification practices, and labour exploitation poses a risk to border security.
Washington is calling on Canada to take a much firmer stance—strengthening roadside enforcement, using better technological tools to detect risks, and monitoring truck-driving schools more closely. According to the Trump administration, the era of encouragement is over: strict rules and penalties are now required to correct the situation.
The coming weeks should shed light on the inner workings of the scheme, the true extent of its political influence, and the measures Ottawa could take to restore fairness, transparency, and safety in the trucking industry.
And even if Ottawa has taken a first step by requiring mandatory declaration of professional fees in box 048 of the T4A, there is still a long road ahead to address the Driver Inc. problem in a meaningful way.
