OTTAWA, (March 29, 2004) — The Canadian Trucking Alliance is once again urging the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators and to the Councils of Ministers to establish a consistent national safety ratings standard before a proclamation of the federal Motor Vehicle Transport Act (MVTA) takes place.

The CTA, under the direction of each provincial trucking association, warns that if the proclamation isn’t delayed, “existing inconstancies between jurisdictions will become even more entrenched than they are right now.”

“The industry has every right to expect and to demand precision, when one considers that safety ratings are to be made public in the expressed hope that they will be used by shippers, insurers and other stakeholders,” the heads of Canada’s trucking associations wrote in a letter to the CCMTA. “We cannot accept a disjointed series of regional profile systems which could send wrong signals to the marketplace.” The CTA urged a second independent assessment to verify sufficiently consistent systems to produce identical ratings for identical safety performance.

The CTA believes such a target is achievable through uniform performance bands, such as “unaudited, satisfactory, conditional and unsatisfactory.”