Lack of truck inspectors poses danger on Ontario highways

'For the sake of public safety, those positions must be filled.' - OPSEU

Toronto (19 Sept. 2006) – The Ontario ministry of transportation is sitting on dozens of unfilled positions for provincial truck inspectors, says the Ontario Public Service Employees Union says.

“Government numbers at the end of June 2006 show 280 transportation enforcement officers on the job,” notes John O’Brien, chair of the OPSEU committee for the ministry. “Two years before that, there were 318. We estimate that the real number of vacancies is over 60.”

O’Brien made the comments after an Oakville woman was killed by a flying truck tire on the Queen Elizabeth Way over the weekend.

“If we learned anything from the Walkerton Inquiry, it’s that cuts to an inspection and enforcement system create the conditions in which bad things happen,” says O’Brien. “For the sake of public safety, those positions must be filled."

OPSEU has commented frequently on truck safety since 1995. It has been drawing attention to the truck inspector vacancies in particular since last year.

“MTO has been bogged down in a review of its truck safety operations for 18 months,” argues O’Brien. “It’s time to stop studying the problem and start fixing it.” NUPGE