The Canadian Trucking Alliance recently wrote to each provincial transportation minister, urging them to adopt recently announced federal rules mandating third-party certified electronic logging devices (ELDs).

While the rules announced by Transport Canada last month cover federally-regulated carriers, CTA is calling on all jurisdictions in Canada to announce and have in place ELD regulations for provincially-regulated carriers, thereby applying ELD requirements nationally for both provincially- and federally-regulated carriers whose drivers are required to maintain a logbook. It is critical to transition the federally-and provincially-regulated fleets from their existing paper-based compliance regime to an electronic one, based on each jurisdiction’s existing application and operational processes.

CTA reminded the ministers how fatigue and distracted driving related collisions, as well as  hours-of-service related violations like those documented in the Humboldt Bronco bus-truck collision investigation, will be reduced with the introduction of third-party certified ELDs for all carriers whose drivers are required to maintain a logbook, regardless of whether they are provincially or federally regulated.

“The non-compliant hours of service behaviour shown by the carrier and driver involved Humboldt tragedy (federally-regulated) is easily imitated by a minority of provincially regulated carriers. Non-compliant behaviour that leads to road safety risks knows no boundaries and certainly does not distinguish between provincially and federally regulated carriers when it comes to hours of service regulations,” the letter stated. “In our view, the events and timeframes in the days prior to the Humboldt collision would have been much more transparent under an ELD regime.  We must end the opportunities for this egregious and unsafe behaviour regardless of whether the trucking company crosses provincial/territorial boundaries or offers services within a jurisdiction.

“It was happenstance the carrier involved in the Humboldt collision was federally regulated; the collision could have just as easily involved a non-compliant provincially regulated carrier,” the letter continued. “As responsible industry representatives and governments, we are responsible for regulating the industry to the best of our ability by ensuring that gaps between federally- and provincially-regulated carriers with respect to hours of service compliance and monitoring are eliminated.”

CTA added the solution to reducing red tape for industry and government is also just as clear.

“Why should there be two methods for hours-of-service monitoring (ELD and paper) when modern, third-party-compliant ELDs are far superior. Asking government officials to enforce an outdated, time consuming, unsafe paper system – in concert with a proven, robust electronic method seems to make little sense from both a safety and administrative cost perspective,” said CTA president Stephen Laskowski. “Now is the time to streamline the compliance verification methods required by industry and monitored by the professional enforcement teams across the county in the interest of elevating public safety and reducing red tape.”