What Happened
On May 12, 2026, Ontario’s Auditor General, Shelley Spence, released a special report examining whether the province properly oversees the training, testing, and licensing of large commercial truck drivers. The findings were alarming — and experts say the government ignored warnings for years.
Background: How Truck Driver Training Works in Ontario
In Ontario, anyone who wants to drive a large transport truck (called a “Class A” vehicle) must go through a specific process:
- Attend a certified school — Drivers must complete what is called Entry Level Training (ELT), a government-approved program that teaches essential trucking skills.
- Log required training hours — Schools must provide at least 103.5 hours of hands-on instruction, covering things like turning, parking, and emergency stops.
- Pass a road test — After training, drivers must pass a test at a government-run DriveTest Center.
- Get licensed — Once they pass, they receive their commercial truck driver’s license.
There are more than 200 registered private career colleges in Ontario that offer this truck driver training. Two government ministries are supposed to keep an eye on them:
- The Ministry of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security (MCURES) — oversees the schools themselves.
- The Ministry of Transportation (MTO) oversees licensing and road tests.
What the Audit Found: Schools Were Cutting Corners
The auditor’s team went undercover to investigate. The audit was conducted over six months using undercover students deployed at six different trucking schools in 2025. Two schools only delivered 59.5 and 81 hours of training — far short of the required 103.5 hours. Two undercover students were never taught key skills like left turns at major intersections, reverse parking, and emergency stopping.
The problems were not new. Research conducted between 2019 and 2024 found that three registered private career colleges had falsified or altered student training records, four did not have records showing students completed required training, and three did not teach all required components.
Even more troubling, six unregistered private career colleges that had already been investigated by the province were still booking road tests and handing out driver training certificates, even though they were not allowed to do so.
What the Government Failed to Do
Both ministries responsible for oversight were found to be asleep at the wheel:
- The Ministry of Colleges had never inspected 25% of the registered private career colleges that were actively offering truck driver training.
- Neither the Transportation Ministry nor MCURES monitored training schools’ outcomes — such as road-test failure rates or post-licensing driving infractions — even though this information could help them target inspections more effectively.
- Some ministry-approved schools could not produce records showing students had completed required training. Some employed unqualified instructors and had students sign off on training hours that were never actually delivered.
- The road testing process was also inconsistent, with different DriveTest Centers following different practices. The Ministry of Transportation was also not restricting drivers with past infractions from receiving a license.
Why This Matters: People Are Dying
This is not just a paperwork problem. Large trucks make up about 3% of all vehicles on Ontario roads, but accounted for 12% of all fatal collisions between 2019 and 2023.
Issues with fatal vehicle accidents in Ontario include a disproportionate number of truck drivers — especially in the northern part of the province — which may be a direct result of trucking schools cutting corners on training.
Industry insiders say they saw this coming. Ontario Trucking Association president Stephen Laskowski called the report’s contents “chilling,” but added they were “not surprising to those of us on the front lines.”
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What Happens Now
After the report was released, the government moved quickly — at least publicly. Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria declared “zero tolerance” for bad actors and said many non-compliant schools have already been shut down.
Minister of Colleges Nolan Quinn said the province had already inspected 14 colleges and committed to inspecting all remaining schools offering truck driver training by the end of June 2026.
The auditor made 13 recommendations, including more unannounced school inspections, better information-sharing between ministries, and fixing the IT system to prevent banned schools from certifying students. Both ministries agreed to all 13 recommendations.
However, industry groups remain skeptical. The Ontario Trucking Association noted that while 25% of trucking schools had never been inspected, approximately 80% of trucking fleets remain uninspected by the Ministry of Transportation — suggesting the problem runs even deeper than the audit revealed.
In short, Ontario allowed hundreds of truck driving schools to operate with little to no oversight for years. Schools faked records, skipped lessons, and put undertrained drivers on the road. The government knew about warning signs since at least 2019, but failed to act — and experts say drivers and the public paid the price in lives lost on Ontario highways.
