The Canadian Trucking Alliance is continuing to push electronic logging device (ELD) enforcement across Canada by early 2020 after the Alliance assembled a group of suppliers and technical experts to provide the government with a roadmap on third party-certification.
CTA adds it is also encouraged following last week’s announcement by the Prime Minister and the Council of First Ministers to prioritize ELDs.
CTA believes the ELD implementation date in Canada must be harmonized as close to possible with the January 2020 implementation date in the United States. However, the Canadian go needs to take the additional step of featuring third party certification to ensure the highest level of compliance in the trucking sector.
Because of the emergence of ELD cheat devices in a self-certified regime, CTA strongly supports allowing only third-party certified ELD devices in heavy commercial trucks while also removing grandfathering provisions contained in Gazette I language, which technically allow certain devices that can manipulate HoS record-keeping.
Recognizing the body of work done by ELD suppliers on the certification framework in both the US and Canada, CTA organized a meeting of Canadian and US experts to draft a technical structure which could help government expediate the process of producing a strong, made-in-Canada, third-party certification component within the Canadian ELD rule.
Stakeholders specifically considered functional ‘tests’ that should be required of ELD devices to ensure they are compliant with the proposed Canadian technical standard.
CTA believes the proposed testing protocols for third-party certification, which have been submitted to government, should expediate the publishing of a final rule in early 2019 and implementation of a rule in early 2020.
“In light of the excellent work conducted by our ELD supplier partners, Minister Garneau’s continued strong leadership and commitment and the first Ministers escalating the ELD file as a top priority, CTA continues to lobby for an ELD mandate enforced on Canadian highways in early 2020,” says CTA’s president Stephen Laskowski.