QTA embarks on 10-year plan

by Mike King

MONTREAL, Que. – The Quebec Trucking Association is starting 2006 with an ambitious resolution in the form of a 10-year plan.

“We have a new vision and propose to do some major restructuring,” association president and general manager Marc Cadieux told Truck News in December.

“We’ve had a committee of industry experts do a profound reflection on our past, present and future then discuss what we must do,” he added.

Marc Brouillette, head of the association’s executive council, said in a joint interview with Cadieux that the decade-long plan will gradually be implemented to take into account the evolution of the trucking industry in Quebec and elsewhere.

“Over the past few years, we’ve had to re-adjust and change our way of operating,” Cadieux pointed out. “We almost have had to re-look everything.”

He said it will mark the first major changes to the 700-member association since it was founded in 1951.

“We’ve reviewed how we’ve done things and what must be changed,” Brouillette noted. “We have an enormous appetite to see changes made.”

But both men agree there are some more immediate pressing matters to be tended to before looking too far ahead. The association wrapped up 2005 in heavy negotiations with the provincial Department of Transportation over the pending amendment of the six-year-old Truck Safety Act respecting owners and operators of heavy vehicles.

Bill 430 was the equivalent of the Commercial Vehicle Operator’s Registration in neighbouring Ontario.

Cadieux argued that if the current legislation is revised as proposed under Bill 129, it would make existing laws that are already tough even more restrictive in Quebec.

Brouillette said other issues debated with the provincial government throughout 2005will carry over into this year.

He stressed the association will also work hard to bring in national codes still not adopted in Quebec.


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