Saskatchewan foreign driver Class 1 licence exemption sparks safety concerns

A recent licence exemption for foreign truck drivers is raising concerns about safety on the roads.

Aimed at addressing labour shortages in the province’s agricultural sector, Saskatchewan is allowing temporary foreign truck drivers to work in the province exempt from the standard Class 1 testing.

Truck driving is one of the most dangerous professions in North America. To combat the dangerous nature of heavy transportation, Saskatchewan and other provinces had put in place strict guidelines on who is allowed to drive Class 1 vehicles.

Those same strict driving laws aggravated an existing labour issue in the agricultural sector, prompting many foreign workers to seek employment in Alberta or B.C., where the laws are less strict.

The exemption seeks to draw foreign workers back to Saskatchewan, where their labour is counted on to meet agricultural production targets.

Saskatchewan Trucking Association executive director Susan Ewart says they’ve raised concerns over the lack of any testing for foreign drivers.

“A truck is a truck, whether it’s got an F sticker on it or an A sticker on it. And so there should be some form of competency-based testing.”

Typically, anyone looking to drive a Class 1 vehicle, such as a semi-truck, would need to take Mandatory Entry-Level Training (MELT) and accrue at least 121.5 hours of training before taking the road test.

Under the current Class 1 exemption, foreign workers from any of the 40 applicable countries are not required to adhere to these guidelines so long as they have an equivalent licence from their country of origin.

SGI Minister Dustin Duncan says they screen foreign workers to ensure their experience is on par with that required in the province.

“Essentially SGI has gone through and looked at their process in terms of licensing drivers in those countries and are satisfied that their licensing regime is essentially at a standard equivalent or in some cases greater to Saskatchewan.”

Ewart says the STA felt blindsided by the decision and that there should have been more considered beyond an exemption.

“Maybe they could have had some resources allocated differently or brought in some third party like testers or maybe even relied on maybe some of the driver training schools to support if they needed to do that, to amp up the workforce.”

The STA says safety should be at the forefront of any decisions made that impact road safety, especially after the Humbolt Broncos crash in 2018.

Duncan says the exemption only runs for 12 months so the program’s effectiveness can be evaluated without committing to the long term.

“We’re not opening it up to the way it was prior to 2021. We’re really limiting it to the 40 countries. And then we’ll do an assessment after this year and see whether or not we’re going to continue with this, or go back to the way that it has been for the last couple of years.”

The STA is encouraging the provincial government to reconsider the exemption for Class 1 licences, and to commit to ensuring road safety without compromising agricultural labour access.