“Really dodgy” Trucking schools a hot topic
“An entrenched, lucrative and dangerous immigration scheme exploiting newcomers and putting lives at risk“
“His new employer had sent the 26-year-old rookie driver out to navigate a semi-trailer through treacherous mountain passes. ‘There was no training,’ says Mr. Singh, who had been in Canada as a visitor for just a few months when he got his first job here under a temporary work permit. “’ was scared. I didn’t have any idea it would be like this.‘
Mr. Singh, who comes from Amritsar, in northwestern India, had never experienced ice or snow. He’d never considered being a truck driver, either, but Canadian immigration consultants told him that getting experience in trucking could help him qualify for permanent residency. So, a year ago, he got a licence and found a company to work for in Surrey, B.C.
A Globe and Mail investigation has discovered that young foreign nationals like Mr. Singh are routinely steered into trucking by some immigration consultants, in collaboration with particular trucking firms. Both take cash payoffs from recruits in exchange for jobs – even though that practice is illegal.
That has spawned an entrenched, lucrative and dangerous immigration scheme, centred in Surrey, that is exploiting newcomers and putting lives at risk across the country. In audio recordings obtained by The Globe, consultants told one international student a trucking job costs $35,000 to $55,000 – an astonishing sum for aspiring immigrants, who often borrow the money to pay the fee.“
The paragraphs above were originally published in the Globe and Mail on October 5, 2019. Although this article has since been put behind a paywall, Trucker/journalist Gord McGill dug the article out for his December 28th, 2024 Substack article. McGill then spoke at length on the “Trish Woods is Critical” podcast to discuss his concerns.
"They have to stop getting the government to pay for people's crappy training:
cheap, low quality training...there is certainly a greed element going on here,
the government could nip it in the bud
but that seems to be off the table for these guys."
--Trucker/Journalist Gord McGill
“What’s really happened in the last few years is, as many Canadians know, is all these visa scams in Canada: the temporary foreign worker program, student visas, just the sheer number of people that Trudeau has invited into Canada.
“There are other issues as well, with the sort of economic structure of trucking which have disincentivized and really attacked well-paid professionalism.
“Then, some of it is the impositions of technology in an effort to do the skilled job of being a truck driver, which has made it much easier for trucking companies to hire people that have – let’s just say – maybe less of a commitment to skill and craft, maybe not the best candidates for being in a truck.
“Truck crashes on Highway 11 and 17 in northern and northwestern Ontario are a daily occurrence,” McGill said on the Trish Woods podcast December 28th.
“People get run off the road, and nobody seems to understand why. Well, they do the but CBC is not allowed to say why, because of the strictures of Wokedom, because, unfortunately, most of the people getting involved in these collisions, or who are the cause of them, are these fellas that are being brought here from India.
“Truck driving schools and trucking companies are based in BC, and they have agents and recruiters in India who bring people here, promise them the world get this work visa. They have NO idea that they’re coming here to drive trucks! I feel sorry for these guys: often times they don’t speak English, have no idea about operating vehicles whatsoever. And then they get off the plane, and all of a sudden they’re get they get shunted off to a truck driving school.
“Then they go to a trucking company and get told, ‘Hey, take this load to Toronto.’ They’ve got zero, absolutely no experience driving in the mountains; they might have just did their training around Vancouver. And then they get launched over the Rocky Mountains and told to drive to Toronto or Montreal.”
If these new drivers don’t like the idea, McGill says, “‘I’ll just take your visa back and send you back to India.” So it’s in effect the form of indentured servitude, that should be viewed as such, but like, I don’t see any government action in the wake of that Globe and Mail article from 2019. NOTHING.”
“They have to stop getting the government to pay for people’s crappy training: cheap, low quality training. Truck driving schools need to be dealt with, they’re just parasitizing themselves and they’re making things worse…there is certainly a greed element going on here, the government could nip it in the bud but that seems to be off the table for these guys.”
In December, 2024, a group of associations focused on the trucking industry met with Minister Sarkaria and Minister Piccini to discuss solutions to assist various ministries in reversing the rapidly deteriorating state of road safety, driver training and performance, professionalism and compliance in the trucking industry.
“As an industry we are appalled at the pace of deterioration in our sector from a safety and compliance perspective,” the group said in a statement. “Public safety is at risk, good drivers and carriers are being driven out of the business. We have a good plan, and the ministers said they will work with us to correct this situation – 2025 will be an important year for the future of the Ontario trucking industry.”
