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Ministry of Transportation Should Tell Us What We Need to Know

Posted By: Dave Agar · 3/7/2013 9:47:00 AM


I swear I'm giving serious thought to starting a "dumb as a stump" section in news and views because I come across some real gems.  Three yesterday alone.

Today it's the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. To the brand new minister Glen Murray, fix this immediately.

It's about the Star investigation into driving schools. They found 50 such schools that were in operation but did not have licenses from the Ministry of Transportation.  Fair enough but now the Star has found out that in the last five years,  477 instructors in the province have had their licenses revoked by the ministry. To which the Star says, give us the names and the reasons why. The Ministry says no you're not getting it.  It's not for public consumption because it involves information of a personal nature which makes it confidential.

I hope Glen Murray is saying, hang on a second. People have the right to know this information. If they're paying good money to send their kids to a driving school, they should be able to find out if the school is legit and whether the instructor assigned to teach their kid is qualified to teach. You should be able to go onto the ministry website and look it up, period. To be fair you can go to the site and look up driving schools that have had their licenses revoked. I counted a list of 39 of them up there but based on what the Star has found, that's not even close to the total and there's no listing of individual instructors who have been stripped of their licenses. I don't really care why an instructor was dropped, just knowing they don't have the license tells me all I want to know about whether my son or daughter goes to them.

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  1. Top Drawer posted on 03/07/2013 10:08 AM
    This is a subject near and dear to me. Over 3000 Canadians are killed every year on the highways of this country, and what are we doing about it? Yes, graduated licensing is having positive effects. But this is a mere drop in the bucket.

    I am a CERTIFIED heavy truck and bus instructor. I went through all the courses to attain this level of professionalism. Here's the jolter. The Province of Ontario has NO requirements, other than holding a valid license pertaining to the class of license you are teaching, when it comes to teaching anything other than a vehicle requiring a 'G' or 'M' license. That is correct. Any yahoo that holds a valid 'A' license can open his or her own driving school and teach someone else to drive a truck. Stop. I can already hear your argument about the pupil still having to pass a driving test. Well, there's more.

    Since the introduction of human rights, via Justin Trudeau's all wise father patriating the constitution, we have a plethora of, for lack of a better term, non-white driving examiners. Why, you ask? Simple. in the past, if a white examiner decided that a non-white candidates driving skills weren't up to snuff and declined to grant said candidate a license, no matter the class, the 'phone was ringing off the hook at the Human Rights Commission with cries of discrimination being shouted loud and clear through the receiver. The P.C. solution? Why, hire non-white, and not necessarily the best qualified, examiners. Believe me, there is now a common practice that examiners only test 'their own'.

    This has further led to a graft practice. Non-white candidates regularly show up at their driving test with $1,500.00 - $2,000.00 dollars in their pocket ,which mysteriously ends up under the clipboard of the examiner.

    I have long been of the opinion that everyone should be re-tested every three years. But this would only be effective after an exhaustive and complete investigation and overhaul of the current system.

    But, then, this is just my take on things.

    Thanks, and keep up the good work.

    Terry

    A.K.A. Top Drawer
    1. Nicholas posted on 03/11/2013 11:41 AM
      @Top Drawer There's not a single thing there that surprises me. Collusion between people of 'like' background to game the system is commonplace in many facets life in this country now. Driving schools and testing is just one of them. One of my employees who had recently received her license gave me a ride once (which was nice, and I have nothing against this person personally) but they were BARELY capable of operating a motor vehicle. They stomped on the gas or stomped on the brake, no half measures, and were baffled by 4 way stops and intersections. It was ridiculous.

      To me the solution is to have cameras in every test vehicle. And to somehow make the assignment of driving testers double blind.

      And, last, on a different note, get rid of the human rights juntas...they are now no more than a club to be used by malcontents.
  2. Bill R posted on 03/07/2013 02:49 PM
    Testing centres are privately run... Questionably accredited testers testing "their own". Someone named "Singh" would walk in, and three others also named "Sing" would miraculously end up with license papers on the same day. Not to mention "legitimate" driving schools, if there are any left, are run by the Russian mob.

    There's an Indian Trucking Association... Should raise everyone’s eyebrows. From their own website: (2008) "Truck drivers from India and Pakistan represent about 60% of Canadian professional drivers"

    I went through the mill and can confirm the stories. Got my AZ a few years ago but was not able to pursue that career path due to hitting the "needs 3 years experience" wall. The only way to get around that is, you guessed it, more
    lying and getting a buddy "insider" to OK things for you. Entire system is crooked.

    I hear more unbelievable things every time I talk with my trucker friend. One driver would arrive with a rig at a site. Another similarly tanned individual would come running out of the bushes, hop in the cab, and do the more tricky backing up of the rig to the loading dock. Meaning: the driver was not properly skilled to handle it.
    1. Mike posted on 03/07/2013 10:27 PM
      @Bill R I have been a professional AZ Driver most of my life and due to an on the job injury i am now a Dispatcher with a major trucking company and what you say is 100% correct...i've seen it happen many times and out of the 50 plus drivers i directly deal with 5 of them are whites..the rest are Indian that can't back up a trailer for the life of them and can't speak English! how the phuck to they get licensed...mmmmmmmmmm can you say bribes etc!!!!!!!!!
  3. Driver posted on 03/09/2013 08:11 AM
    The Toronto Star investigation just confirms what we see on the road from 4 wheelers and heavy truck operators alike all day.

    And this has been going on for years, through both Liberal and Conservative govts.

    I give credit to the MTO for dealing with some of the shady instructors but we should know their names, the companies the operated as (or under) and the reason for their suspentions.


    With Federal Conservative Jason Kenney, as also outlined in the Toronto Star courting the various ethnic communities in the GTA in the past couple of weeks, please note that the Conservatives have no intention of undoing any past Liberal allowances made to minorities groups.

    What a Provincial Government can do is reverse the Mike Harris/Tim Hudak era 'privatization' of the MTO and make it fully public again with the same stringent requirements that they had in place before it was dismantled. These issues were not prevalent when the MTO was publicly run.

    Of course the real issue is the lobbying by the various Trucking Association (the owners of trucking companies) to get these immigrant drivers to fill the void. What they do is put out press releases claiming 'a truck driver shortage is looming' but what they really are saying is 'we can't get enough Canadians to drive a truck because they want to paid a liveable wage and not have to spend weeks from home with all of the down time at botrders, customers etcetera being non paid.

    A lot of drivers are making $10.00 an hour when all is said and done but there is no way the Trucking Associations want to pay people for their time and skill so they lobby the Feds to allow 'skilled drivers' to come here and fill the void and work for peanuts.

    Welcome to the world of Free Trade. If you can't move the job to some 50 cent an hour country, create that climate here by importing the workers from the 50 cent an hour countries.

    Sadly, no government has shown any indication of changing this course (free trades), except the NDP but no one is going to vote for them so nothing is going to change....
  4. Ernie posted on 03/09/2013 02:06 PM
    This is not a free trade issue - this is a lack of oversight issue.

    I am not in favour of free trade agreements with china or india but lets call it what it is - corruption - plain and simple
    1. Driver posted on 03/10/2013 06:57 AM
      @Ernie No it's not a Free Trade issue, I just used that as an analogy. If they can't move the jobs such as manufacturing offshore, they (the owners complicit with a corporate friendly govts) will flood the industry with so many people that the wages are suppressed. It has the same effect.

      The problems with the MTO we are seeing now are why we had regulations in the first place.

      The corruption is evident and a return to a fully publicly operated MTO with all of it's previous mandates and regulations is required to eliminate that corruption.

      But that will never happen so we best get used to the way it is and keep your no-fault (groan) insurance up to date.
  5. nike jordan posted on 04/12/2013 08:51 AM
    thanks for this item because it was great situation and loved it when i initially saw it.
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