Ontario truck drivers with less than 2 years' experience must now pass Quebec exams

Effective Thursday, Ontario truck drivers with fewer than two years of experience who want to exchange their licence for a Quebec Class 1 licence must pass driving exams administered by the Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec.

If they fail twice, they're required to complete mandatory training before obtaining the licence. The decision follows a May report by Ontario's Auditor General Shelly Spence, which highlighted serious shortcomings in trucking training and oversight in that province and cited Quebec's stricter rules as a model to follow.

Quebec has faced a series of fatal heavy-truck crashes in recent years. In August 2025, Tanya and Elliot Lalonde died on Highway 30 in Boucherville when their car was struck by a heavy truck; in July 2025, Madeline J. Darby died in similar circumstances in L'Ange-Gardien. Those deaths prompted the government to ask the chief coroner to launch a public inquiry, which is continuing through November.

The province also announced a working group to strengthen road-safety requirements for temporary foreign workers driving trucks, with the goal of increasing the number of workers adopting safe driving practices.

André Durocher, director of the CAA-Québec Foundation for Road Safety, called the new rules "a step in the right direction," though he stressed that road safety requires a series of measures. Stéphane Emond, owner of the driving school Centre de formation routier de Montréal, said the rules need to go further, arguing that even long-licensed drivers should be re-evaluated if they haven't been properly assessed.