According to a recent Insurance Bureau of Canada report, new commercial truck drivers with inadequate training are putting the safety of Canada’s roads and highways in jeopardy, validating what we have been saying all along.

Premier, this is the reality: Immigrants are being charged up to $40,000 for training they never receive. Many are simply given a licence and sent on the road, with red tape and green tape on the pedals to indicate stop and go.

Licence testing must be done by the MTO.

When will this government finally do something to protect these workers and all other road users from preventable accidents?

When will you institute company inspections with harsher consequences for employers breaking the law?

Thank you to the member from Timiskaming–Cochrane. I always learn a lot about farming and agriculture when you speak. I wonder if you can talk about how the frequent closures of Highways 11 and 17 affect farmers and their products.

Drivers are travelling across the entire province without seeing a single inspection station that is open. While MTO and OPP blitzes have led to charges being laid, drivers need to be stopped earlier and more frequently. The lack of proper training and lax enforcement of truck safety is resulting in horrific crashes and constant highway closures.

We know there is a new super-station opening up on Highway 11/17 in Shuniah, but on other major routes, inspection stations remain closed, as they have been for years.

Will the government finally commit to staffing inspection stations across the province so that the highest possible standard of safety is enforced on our highways?

I would like to welcome Travis McDougall, from Truckers for Safer Highways, who is joining us today.

Welcome to your House, Travis.

In northwestern Ontario, we experienced another dreadful weekend of carnage on our highways. Two houses were taken out by a transport truck in Beardmore. Tragically, another snowplow driver was killed near Ignace. Highway 17 was closed for a second 12-hour period because two transports crashed into each other, scattering debris all over the highway and killing one of the drivers.

Auditor General reports have told us that certain carriers are licensing drivers with next-to-no training. I heard from an OPP officer this weekend who is afraid to go to work because the highways are unsafe.

What is the Premier doing to make sure that all truck drivers are fully trained and experienced in winter driving before they are licensed to do cross-Canada deliveries?

First, thank you to the union workers who I hope will be doing that work. But I’d also like to point out that there is nothing in the discussions about the manufacturing of electric vehicles that addresses the undoing of environmental policies that took place during the last government. I think it’s fantastic that we will be building these vehicles, but what are we doing about making sure that our building processes guarantee that future generations will have a livable world to live in? That has to be a part of every project, and so far I have not heard that from this government.

I will certainly be listening and fighting hard for what we need. We have recently gone through an exercise in which ambulances have been cut from the region. This means that people in Beardmore, for example, are at least two hours away from getting any assistance in an emergency.

Now, Beardmore, for people who don’t know, is on Highway 11, mostly a two-lane highway that has thousands of trucks travelling on it every day—many truck drivers, who unfortunately have not been well-trained and who are under a great deal of pressure to get where they’re going fast. More reputable employers actually don’t put the same pressure on their drivers, but what we are seeing is a constant number of trucks going off the road, and some of these accidents can be severe.

When I think of the area near Beardmore and Rocky Bay, which is just down the highway, there is no turning lane, and yet a school bus has to go back and forth from Rocky Bay to Thunder Bay or to Nipigon, which is about an hour, and there’s no safe way for that bus to get in and out of that community. So I will be—

We could also use money to improve snow clearing. I believe it was brought to this House last term that we need to change to an eight-hour snow-clearing cycle, and not the 16-hour one that we currently have.

We certainly want to see money invested in health care, and I would support this bill if I truly believed that that was what was happening, but what I see is that there is punishment taking place of the workers who are there right now, the workers who have been there during the pandemic and are being punished—for what? For being there—while private services continue to be funded excessively out of the public purse. That’s why I don’t support it.