Trucking company owner from Humboldt tragedy pleads guilty
CALGARY, Alta. – The owner of the trucking company involved in the Humboldt Broncos bus collision pleaded guilty today to five charges, and has been fined $5,000.
Sukhmander Singh, owner of Adesh Deol Trucking, admitted he failed to maintain time logs for drivers, neglected to make sure his drivers complied with safety regulations, maintained more than one daily log for any given day, and did not have or follow a written safety program.
Judge Sean Dunnigan gave Singh a $1,000 fine for each of the offenses he pleaded guilty, totaling $5,000.
The man convicted to eight years in prison for causing the collision with the Humboldt Broncos team bus, Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, was a driver for Adesh Deol Trucking.
The offences Singh has admitted guilt to, which his lawyer did today in Calgary court on his behalf, occurred between Jan. 1 and March 31 of last year, prior to the Humboldt tragedy.
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A $5000 fine is an insult…this will not act as a deterrent for him or anyone else who fails to comply with either Provincial or Federal regulations. Hit them in the pocket book so that they will be guaranteed not to risk doing it again.
If you were to make it $10,000 – $20,000 per occurrence which would total $50,000 – $100,000 that would be some kind of incentive to comply.
He should of got the same as the driver. Everyone forgot that he started a company in a different name 2 days after and probably will never change his ways. It’s his responsibility that his drivers act and perform as professionals. How did the driver pass his initial driving test drive with the company (and the provincial driver examiner – who should also be held responsible) – when he blatantly ignored five warnings coming up to a stop sign? (That guy is a pathetically bad driver). Why does everyone else have to have a safety program but not him? The judges should be held responsible as well for bad decisions.
Only $5000 fine, really?? Not even banned from operating/owning/assisting with a trucking company? He clearly flaunts the law to and has no respect for the federal and provincial laws within the trucking industry. I would also like to see the results of how Mr. Singh obtained his CDL license to see if anything underhand happened there too.
This is a disgrace to the industry. If he had been doing his job correctly, the incident could have been prevented. $5,000? What a slap in the face to the victims of that collision.
When company owners are found to be negligent in the death of a worker, the penalties are much more severe, and can include jail time. Yet this man’s negligent operation of his company led to numerous deaths and injuries, and he gets a small fine. He should face similar penalty as the driver, or more severe.
This just tells fly by night operators that they can run shoddy operations, and only face a small fine even if they have a significant incident.
Nothing can be done to turn back time and there is no amount of justice that will make amends for the traumatic losses suffered by all who are close to this tragedy, but I wonder, does this mean we should settle for no justice at all? Seems unjust to me that all of the risk and punishment should land on the driver’s head alone while at the same time a business owner can profit by disregarding the laws of the land.
For what it is worth, I genuinely believe that the truck driver involved did not set out to cause harm on that fateful day and I think most people would believe that as well. That’s not absolving him of his responsibility in any way as he could have known and ought to have known that not following the rules puts him and everyone he shares the road with in danger. As a result of his direct actions, he has been handed an 8 year sentence and will be removed from Canada when it is all said and done. We will never all agree as to whether or not the sentence was severe enough, but we can all agree that the driver has been dealt with and faces meaningful, lifelong consequences.
However, if you are asking me to believe that the owner of Adesh Deol’s failure to maintain time logs for his drivers, neglecting to make sure his drivers complied with safety regulations, maintaining more than one daily log for any given day and not having or following a written safety program was also unintentional… I absolutely refuse to believe that.
The owner did know that he was required to keep track of his driver’s safety and compliance obligations… he chose not to. He should have known, could have known and arguably did know how this particular driver was operating his truck, as certainly the driver wasn’t booking his own loads, dispatching, billing or handling his own payroll. Each extra mile his trucks ran over and above the law put money into his own pockets. The $5000.00 he paid in fines is a drop in the bucket compared to the extra dollars earned by completely disregarding hours of service regulations. The owner turned a blind eye to it because it was in his own best interests to do so, as was proven out by this ruling.
The $5000 administrative penalty meted out by the courts in no way resembles meaningful consequences. This issue remains unresolved in my eyes.
Has anything been written about the details of the trip or any other extenuating circumstances? I would hope the investigation would have included asking the driver who he took direction from? Was his schedule completely in his own control with no other influence? Was he dispatched? If so, by who? Was he told where he had to be and by when? Did the driver, a new employee of Adesh Deol, feel empowered to follow the law or did his instruction on where to be and when take priority over all else?
Interested in reading the rest of the story… Even more interested in whether or not the powers that be take enough interest in public safety and in general business governance to clean this up for all of us.
I agree with the other respondents, $5000.00 is a joke, but if the penalty was any higher the owner would go back to court, scream discrimination and get off scot free because a liberal and politically correct justice system would agree. Let a white Canadian owned company have the same misfortune….heaven forbid…and see what the penalties are.
They went fishing they only found 5000 all in all he can’t be that bad ,his driver screwed up big time,and is paying for it,I’ve seen enough company safety programs,in my time,all designed to protect the companies,the ministry found this guy fit and safe to drive,the racist comments I’ve read on here are just ignorant,one person or 15 persons,it’s always tragic,this industry is and has been in steady decline for pay and talented drivers ,,but I’m sure they will develop an app to solve all there problems eventually.besides I doubt after the insurance is done with him it will be impossible to operate again.
5000 what a joke, he should be deported, any way no loss they only hire there own kind, singh/singh/ mohamad/mohamad, their the only one’s who got caught, what about the others, want to see a picture of a mussi parking in the ditch sideways. the QPP. just scratch his head same driver a 2 hrs a go in an other ditch. if these idiots drove for me they wouldn’t !