Ontario private colleges not properly training truck drivers, AG finds

The state of truck driver training — with some students not even completing all mandatory courses before being given their licences — “poses a risk for all drivers on Ontario’s roads,” a scathing report from the auditor general has found.

The watchdog found that truck drivers in Ontario may not be completing required training before obtaining their licences, as private career colleges fall short of the government’s standards for mandatory instruction.

Currently, large commercial truck drivers are expected to complete a Ministry of Transportation-mandated training program and pass a road test before receiving their trucking licence.

While drivers are often trained at registered private career colleges, the programs are overseen and regulated by the ministries of transportation and colleges and universities.

Ontario auditor general Shelley 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.

“This poses a safety risk for all drivers on Ontario’s roads,” the auditor said.

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.

The audit uncovered a number of examples at registered and unregistered private career colleges offering truck driver training:

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• Two private career colleges delivered 59.5 and 81 hours of the required minimum of 103.5 training hours
• Two students failed to learn key truck driving elements such as left turns at major intersections, reverse parking and emergency stopping
• Students at two private career colleges reviewed by the auditor said their instructors were sometimes distracted by being on their phones during the behind-the-wheel lessons

Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said several bad actors have been closed down by the government and, in some cases, police were involved.

“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.”

It’s not clear exactly which schools were shut down or who was charged by police, but Sarkaria said the government has been “taking significant actions to strengthen” oversight.

Critics, however, said the government has known about the issues for a long time and has failed to enforce them, calling it a “public safety” issue.

“There’s so many examples in here, but they’ve also sent a message to all the bad actors in here, that they can get away with this,” Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said.

The auditor general’s report documents an explosion in private career colleges offering training to truck drivers in the province.

In 2019, there were 93 private colleges offering truck driver training in Ontario. That number increased to 205 in 2024. The number of truck drivers completing their training at those institutions rose in that time from 13,683 to 22,699.

The auditor general looked at a sample of government inspections and reports on private career colleges over a five-year period.

They found that three private career colleges had “falsified or altered” records, while another four colleges had no records to show that all students had completed all of the course materials.

To conduct the audit, Spence enrolled six students at five private career colleges to assess the education they were offered.

Two of the five failed to teach the minimum number of training hours required, while another college exceeded the maximum ratio of four students to each instructor. Two weren’t taught key maneuvers like reverse parking or emergency stopping.

“We had six students that went to various career colleges and also MTO-led training and two out of six (encountering issues) is a pretty big ratio, I would say,” Spence said.

“That’s a sample, I can’t really extrapolate to the whole population, but I will say that it is a problem and that putting controls in place like we are recommending, to ensure students are actually getting the training like actually required is what the ministry that has this oversight should be looking for.”

Stiles said the issues the six undercover students found were alarming.

“That’s what jumped out to me,” she said. “Just the sheer number of times, when the auditor general sent in her secret agents or whatever that they found these issues.”

Part of the issue, the auditor general contended, was a lack of inspections from the Ministry of Colleges and Universities. As of March last year, a quarter of all private career colleges offering truck driver training hadn’t ever been inspected.

“(The ministry of colleges and universities’) new risk-based tool does not stipulate how many inspections are to be performed, how often the inspections are performed and how long they should take to be completed,” the report found.

Spence clarified the 25 per cent of private colleges, which had never been inspected, were therefore operating without ever receiving any oversight or licensing checks.