The minister in charge of Ontario’s private career colleges says his team is now urgently inspecting trucking schools after the auditor general found a quarter of them had never been visited by a government overseer.
A scathing report from auditor general Shelley Spence revealed a series of issues with how colleges were teaching drivers, including some students not completing mandatory training and others not being tested in key skills like reversing or left-hand turns.
“This poses a safety risk for all drivers on Ontario’s roads,” the auditor said.
Among the issues flagged by Spence was the fact that 25 per cent of the province’s 205 private truck colleges had never been inspected by the government.
Minister of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security Nolan Quinn pledged Wednesday to urgently review and audit the remaining colleges that still haven’t been visited.
“Since the audit started, we’ve inspected another 14 agencies and I expect in the next six weeks for all our institutions to be audited,” he told reporters at Queen’s Park.
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“It has been on our radar,” he insisted. “It has been taking place…. Our expectations are in the next six weeks, all of the schools will be inspected.”
Drivers are often trained at registered private career colleges, and the programs are overseen and regulated by the ministries of transportation and colleges and universities.
Spence found, however, that the Ontario government “did not have effective processes and systems” in place to guarantee consistent and appropriate training and, in some cases, fell below the provincial standard.
Large commercial trucks account for just three per cent of all vehicles driven in the province, but they were involved in 12 per cent of all fatal collisions between 2019 and 2023, Spence found.
Data kept by the government also shows that, in the decade leading up to 2025, truck drivers were at fault for 46 per percent of the collisions they were involved in.
Quinn said Wednesday that the trucking schools are now set to be looked at “on an annual basis” and would be held to the “highest standard” of education.
“I want to ensure that the bad actors will be pulled out of the system,” he said.
Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said on Tuesday that some schools offering truck driving had been shut down and charges had even been laid by provincial police, although he did not offer specifics.
“We have a proactive approach we are putting forward,” he told reporters. “Last January, we referred some of those to the Ontario Provincial Police, who then acted on it and charged individuals.”
Quinn couldn’t say why a quarter of private career colleges had not been inspected before the auditor general began digging into the issue.
Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said the government had waited far too long to begin auditing all trucking schools.
“It’s not like this is news or should be news to that minister or any of those ministers or that premier,” she said.
“We have been raising this issue for years. This has been in the media for years. I think it’s a bit rich to hear the government say now we’re going to audit this.”
Ontario Liberal interim leader John Fraser said it was “a little too late” to be looking at the issue.
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