CTA warns HOS rules ‘unraveling’; calls for non-compliance penalties

OTTAWA — Frustrated with the lack of effort by western provinces to harmonize federal hours-of-service rules, the Canadian Trucking Alliance is urging Ottawa to withhold transport funding until they do.

CTA says a number of provinces — particularly Alberta, B.C., and Saskatchewan — are trying to back away from their commitment to adopt the new HOS standard that came into force at the beginning of this year. CTA says the jurisdictions are ignoring key elements of the new rules, by exempting huge numbers of vehicles from it, and even creating their own rules.

The CTA says it is so concerned about the “unraveling of the rules,” which took over 10 years to develop, that it is calling upon the federal Minister of Transport Lawrence Cannon to exercise his authority under the Motor Vehicle Transport Act, or to withhold highway infrastructure funds to force dissenting provinces onside.

Alberta is the only province not to adopt the new federal HOS
standard, while other regions are enforcing only what they like.

The group also wants Ottawa to consider revoking the provinces’ authority to issue federal safety certificates if they continue to provide certain exemptions to interprovincial carriers.

Nearly a year after the rules took effect, Alberta has still not mirrored the federal standard in its own books.

As TodaysTrucking.com reported last week, B.C. recently ended the “educational enforcement” period of the rules.

B.C.’s Commercial Vehicle Safety and Enforcement division also told us they have directed staff to “focus enforcement” on vehicles having a GVW in excess of 11,794 lbs. (the National Safety Code defines a commercial truck as a vehicle weighing more than 4,500 kg). Other provinces have exempted local drivers from the rules.

“From the outset of discussions more than ten years ago to put a new hours of service rule in place, a fundamental — perhaps the most important — undertaking given to the trucking industry by the federal and provincial governments was that the new regulations would be uniformly applied across Canada as a National Safety Code standard instead of a hodge-podge of inconsistent provincial regulations,”
says CTA chief executive officer David Bradley,

“Now, only ten months after the coming-into-force of the federal regulations, we see a disturbing trend emerging that if left unchecked, will negate the basic principles of safety and regulatory harmonization.”

While he understands the new rules are generally more restrictive than the previous regime, Bradley stresses that its critical the rules are “uniformly implemented in all provinces and regions so as not to confer an unfair competitive advantage on any company or industry sector, either by virtue of company size, the type of equipment operated or region of domicile or operation.

“How, for example, could truck drivers from one part of the country be considered fit to drive longer hours, or take shorter off-duty periods just because of the sector of the business they are in or the type of truck they drive, when truck drivers in other sectors or in other parts of the country operating under exactly the same circumstances would be judged unfit?” Bradley continues. “It makes no sense, from either a competitiveness or safety point of view.”

Bradley admits the penalties he’s calling for are controversial but, he said, “the anticipated move by some provinces to walk away from such an important national safety standard is beyond controversial; it’s disturbing. Moreover, it reflects a trend that has been going on far too long in this country and which the industry is hard pressed to tolerate much longer.”


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