Ontario is not effectively monitoring commercial truck driver training and licensing regimes, leaving many unqualified drivers on the roads, the province's auditor general found in a special report released Tuesday.
Auditor General Shelley Spence uncovered career colleges that have cut corners on training hours and skills, with little oversight from two provincial ministries. The auditor's office sent several people undercover as driving students at six training providers over six months last year, discovering significant gaps in instruction.
"We found that two private career colleges delivered 59.5 and 81 hours of the required minimum of 103.5 training hours," Spence wrote. "Two of our students were not taught key truck driving elements such as left turns at major intersections, reverse parking and emergency stopping."
Between 2019 and 2024, the Ministry of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security identified three registered private career colleges that had falsified or altered student training records, four that lacked records demonstrating students completed required entry-level training components, and three that did not teach all required components. However, the auditor general found the ministry's inspection regime was lacking; as of March 2025, it "had never inspected" 54 of the 216 registered private career colleges offering entry-level commercial truck training.
A critical gap exists in communication between regulators. The ministry has no process to routinely share inspection information with the Ministry of Transportation, which enforces driving laws, thereby limiting potential enforcement action. Additionally, neither ministry monitored training outcomes for commercial truck drivers, "such as road test pass or fail rates, post-licensing driving infraction rates or collision rates," the report stated.
The auditor also found that truckers' driving tests did not assess all highway manoeuvres at higher speeds. Commercial truck drivers account for a disproportionate number of fatalities on Ontario's roads, with the problem especially acute in northern Ontario. The auditor has filed 13 recommendations to the province, which has accepted all of them.
