TORONTO, Ont. — The Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) is urging the province to provide incentives for the purchase of 2007 engines and to overhaul the “discriminatory tax treatment” for the trucking industry.

The comments came during a pre-budget consultation with the provincial Ministry of Finance.

“Ontario’s economic prosperity is predicated upon its ability to participate in the global supply chain and attract new investment and that requires a competitive, efficient and productive freight transportation system,” OTA president David Bradley told Finance Minister, Dwight Duncan. “The Ontario government must eliminate artificial barriers to competitiveness in sectors like trucking and to do that we need to look at the tax system, at infrastructure investment and ways to cut government waste and improved delivery of government services.”

He added: “I am sure you don’t appreciate hearing from business groups coming before you looking for tax relief for their sector, but when a sector, like trucking, is being discriminated against in terms of the sales taxation of its business inputs, then the request is justified.”

Bradley said it’s unfair that Ontario carriers pay three forms of sales tax on new trucks and trailers the MJVT, PST and GST. He encouraged the Ministry to repeal sales tax on trucking equipment or harmonize it with the GST, as other regions have done.

The OTA is also calling on the province to accelerate penetration of the environmentally-friendly 2007 trucks by creating a separate, more aggressive CCA rate. The OTA also wants the province to regain control over WSIB, develop long-term infrastructure funding plans for main trade corridors and increase MTO funding to invest in information systems that will result in improved customer service and more effective safety programs.