TORONTO, (April 25, 2005) — Ontario’s Minister of Transportation will create a government- trucking industry working group to review issues concerning regulation truck safety and related regulations in the province.

The news was welcomed by David Bradley, president of the Ontario Trucking Association, which proposed the committee.

MTO’s commitment to reviews of the CVOR, Safety Rating and Facility Audit systems came less than a week after a meeting between Bradley, OTA Chairman Scott Smith and Minister Harinder Takhar.

“OTA will utilize this review to highlight needed changes to the system in order to ensure that carriers who invest in safety see a return on that investment,” Bradley said in a release. “The current system focuses too much attention on carriers who already get it when it comes to truck safety and neglects those carriers who approach safety as an ancillary factor
in running a trucking company.”

The trucking group has been vigorously pressing MTO to conduct a full review of the CVOR to make the system more equitable and improve truck safety. OTA srgues that a review of facility audits and safety ratings will allow OTA to make changes that will focus MTO resources more efficiently on companies that need the most intervention.

OTA was involved in the development of the CVOR system in the 1980s and was instrumental in the last substantive review of the system in 1997.