The Private Motor Truck Council of Canada is pleased with today’s announcement by Transport Canada on the posting of the Electronic Logging Device Mandate in Canada Gazette Part 1.

In a Press conference held in Brampton this morning (December 18th), Mike Millian, the President of the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada, was invited to join the Honourable Marc Garneau, the Federal Minister of Transportation, Steven Del Duca, the Ontario Minister of Transportation, along with Vice Chair of the CTA, Scott Smith to make the announcement.

“The PMTC has been involved in consultations with Transport Canada from the beginning, dating back to 2010, and are very pleased to see the proposed legislation announced here today. Our current method of using pen and paper for tracking Hours of Service is an outdated one, and one whose time needs to be put in the past. There is too much opportunity for unscrupulous operators to pressure their drivers to fudge their records. While the majority of carriers in the Trucking Industry are safe operators, and have polices and procedures in place to ensure compliance with HOS regulations, there are always outliers in every Industry. This regulation will force these uncompliant carriers to change their operational practices, or exit the industry. “

It is somewhat fitting that the proposed ELD regulation was announced today, the same day this very mandate becomes law south of the border. The PMTC encourages that heavy lifting begin immediately to ensure Provinces and Territories work with the Federal Government to adopt the regulations in their jurisdictions as well, to ensure we have a uniformed regulation across the land for all carriers, not just federally regulated ones. “I was very encouraged to hear Ontario Minister of Transportation Steven Del Duca throw his support behind Minster Garneau today, and hope other Provinces will follow suit” stated Millian.

While we are happy with the announcement, we have also voiced our concern about the certification of devices to the feds. “In the US, they have gone down the road of allowing Manufacturers to self-certify their ELD’s to a standard, with no protection in place for the carrier if the device is later to be found non-compliant with the FMCSA Requirements”. The PMTC has made it clear that this is not something that should be repeated in Canada. If Transport Canada cannot certify the devices, then a 3rd party needs to be approved and certified to perform this task. We can’t allow the mess we are seeing South of the Border for certification repeated in Canada. We expressed these concerns in a recent meeting in Ottawa with Transport Canada, and are cautiously optimistic that this will be handled prior to full implementation of the ELD regulation.

 

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