The Decibel - Unpaid and overworked: labour violations in Canadian trucking

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

The Canadian trucking industry touches almost every aspect of commercial  life — most Canadian products on store shelves made at least some part of their journey on the back of a truck. The conditions for drivers who got them there, however, are getting worse.  A Globe investigation by Sara Mojtehedzadeh , an investigative reporter at The Globe, and Mahima Singh, a Globe data editor, looked into the concerns raised by drivers and experts in the trucking industry.  They found widespread accusations of wage theft and exploitation, violations of labour laws and insufficient training. Sara’s on the show to detail the working conditions for drivers , the impact of lax enforcement, and how this jeopardizes safety on the roads.  Sara and Mahima will hold a Q&A about their investigation on Wednesday, June 3, at 12 p.m. ET. Send them your questions in advance. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

One fine day we are working, you're employed. And suddenly we get to know a bad news like now not just your money is gone. Also, you are jobless. You're hearing from a truck driver named Nav. The Globe agreed to only use his first name because he says he fears retribution from his former employer. Nav has been in the industry for a decade. And he says he experienced wage theft after the company he was working for in 2024. filed for bankruptcy.

I personally was owed between $15,000 to $20,000. And I personally know 60, 70 people, the money they were owed went up to $40,000. Even the process to get that money is very hard. You know, you're already going through a lot. You lost your job. You got a first job to get the bread and butter for the family. You lost the money that you worked for 18 months to just get an officer for your case. too much. And that too

after 18 months, a company is far for bankruptcy. You're not getting nothing. Nav says he hasn't seen any money of the thousands that he's owed. Our colleagues, Sarah Moshehzadeh, an investigative reporter for the globe, and Mahima Singh, a globe data journalist, have spent months

looking into the cracks in the trucking industry. And the issues they found go beyond wage theft. There's also accusations of exploitation, violations, of labor laws and inadequate training to name a few more. And while those problems are felt firsthand by the drivers, it ultimately means less safe roads for everyone.

Today, Sara is here to talk about what she learned about Canada's trucking industry and what can be done to improve things. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. So, Sara, we heard about the story of one truck driver and their unfortunate experience working in the industry. Can you help me understand the broader industry? Like, how would you describe how it is right now?

Well, I think the first thing to say is that obviously it's a really essential sector. Like, we all rely on trucking and truck drivers. But I think what I have heard over the course of the past year is that there is an increasing problem with wage theft. with drivers just not getting their pay, with the complaint system that's meant to deal with that, really not working. And then a range of other sort of related issues from safety lapses and, you know, fatigue on the road, as well as the rise of this essentially illegal business model that involves trucking firms treating drivers like they're self-employed rather than employees who have protections like minimum wage, overtime, you know, these basic things that we all expect. And really

just overall, I would say, a decline in working conditions. And I think what I also heard was sort of like an inability for trucking companies to compete fairly because many firms are sort of saying that when you have some companies who are essentially adopting this illegal business model, like it undermines the playing field for everyone. And it's really causing this huge ripple effect in the sector. Yeah. And we're going to get into all the things you've learned about in your investigation in more detail. Before we do, I think many people will probably know about how difficult the job it is. But let's spell it out. Like, what is the day in a life of a truck driver like? I mean, it's a grueling job. So in Canada, the maximum that you can be on the road is 13 hours

driving a day, which is a long day. That's actually higher than in the U.S. The maximum there is 11 hours. But what I heard from truck drivers is that often your day is much longer than that. First of all, there is a sort of growing issue with companies finding ways around these legal limits on driving times. So I did hear from drivers about being forced to fake logbook entries so that they could get around those maximum drive times. And then there's all sorts of work on top of the driving that many drivers don't actually get paid for. So, you know, sitting at the border waiting to cross, which can be hours. I'm sure now, especially with the border crossing, it must be taking longer. It's getting worse and worse. And, you know, for most drivers these days, you do

not get paid unless the wheels are moving. So all of that downtime is unpaid. And it can take, you know, yeah, seven hours to cross the border, you know, checking your vehicle before you get out on the road to make sure that it's roadworthy. Often that is not paid. If, you know, something goes wrong with the delivery and you have to wait, again, all of that is unpaid or just you get like a small sum of money to compensate for your time, maybe a hundred bucks or something like that. And it's, you know, long periods of time away from your family. And so I heard that really frequently as well that it can be a lonely job, one that causes a lot of familial strain. And it's just a, it's a tough way to make a living. You touch on this briefly, but can you explain why these jobs are so important to Canada?

Well, pretty much everything that we buy off the shelves has spent time in the back of a track over 70% of goods that we as Canadians consume is moved across the country or continent this way. So it really is vital to our economy and also to just how we live our lives. And I think, you know, what I've sort of heard from drivers is that the working conditions are not lining up with, you know, how critical this sector is. Before we get into the issues, can you just tell me who the people are that are doing this job? In recent years, many drivers are newcomers to Canada. And I think it's always attracted newcomers to Canada because, you know, many people who have been here for several generations,

many people would not choose to spend that much time away from their family. So, you know, immigrant drivers are a really essential part of this workforce. And we do know that in recent years, increasingly trucking firms have turned to the temporary foreign worker program, which has raised concerns again about working conditions. Also, the international student program, many of those students ended up retraining as drivers and getting a job in the sector. And there's a lot of talk about labor shortages in this sector. But, you know, on the flip side of that, I think many people will say, you know, there's actually a shortage of good working conditions and that firms are struggling to attract and retain drivers because, you know, it is a difficult job and people are

just not making wages that make them want to stay in this role. How is trucking regulated in Canada? What does that look like? So it's actually quite fragmented. And I think that is part of what has raised a lot of concerns for people because essentially for interprovincial trucking firms. So companies who drive across borders, whether it be across provinces or internationally. The working standards or labor standards are regulated by the federal government, so employment and social development Canada. And then provincially, the provinces are responsible for licensing the vehicles and for enforcing road safety. And then the provinces and federal government also

coordinate to set the sort of national safety standard. So there's different actors. involved and they're all responsible for a different piece of the puzzle. And I think the concern is that because it is fractured in that way that bad actors are slipping through the cracks. Let's unpack what you found. And let's start with something called employee misclassification. What does that mean? And why is that an issue? So employee misclassification is basically when a company treats someone as if they are self-employed, but they don't meet the legal definition of someone who is truly self-employed. And what that means is that they essentially become disconnected

from all of the labor protections that we get under our labor laws because self-employed people are not covered by those standards. It is a way for employers to essentially illegally slash their payroll costs. The Canadian Trucking Alliance has estimated that this can save an employer $22,000 on a single driver because you're not paying. the pension entitlements, employment insurance, you're not doing vacation pay or not giving sick leave, you're not paying workers' compensation premiums. So it can save companies a lot of money. And it means that workers miss out on those basic entitlements. You know, we see allegations of this model in sectors that,

you know, most of us are familiar with like the gig economy, ride-sharing platforms. But the concern is that it has really increased in scale in the trucking industry as well. Okay. Can you help me understand a little bit more? So how is it that an employer is able to misclassify somebody? I mean, is it legal? No. So it's illegal under federal labor law, which is what applies to these trucking firms. But essentially it means you're not putting someone on your payroll. And, you know, a real employee is someone who like essentially clocks into a job, uses their employer's truck in the case of trucking. And it's essentially, acting at the behest of their employer, which is what many of these truck drivers do. They drive a

company truck. They, you know, pick up on the schedule that's given to them. They're not entrepreneurs the way that a small business would be, a truly self-employed person would be. And so for that reason, they legally should be considered employees with all those basic rights. But we're seeing a sort of rise in the number of firms who are choosing to evade those. minimum standards. What does this mean for truckers wages? Well, what I heard from truck drivers is that company drivers or drivers who are on payroll are more likely to get like additional benefits and maybe a bit more coverage for those like fallow periods where you're working but you're not actually driving the truck, whereas a misclassified driver, a contracted driver is like

again, only getting paid for like when they're actually driving the vehicle. But we're also seeing in the data that self-employed earnings have actually declined over a period of 10 years. So we got custom census data for between 2011 and 2021. And we saw that earnings for truck drivers who are classified as employees actually kind of crept up over that time period. But for self-employed drivers with no paid help, which is sort of the most precarious category of driver, I would say. It does include some people who are legitimate owner operators, but it can also include people who have been misclassified as self-employed. Earnings actually started to decline over that period, and in some regions, they are now actually

right at the poverty line. So I think it just kind of speaks to that pressure cooker that many drivers describe. We'll be right back. So you found that the number of self-easterners. employed drivers has shot up. And in some cities like Brantford and Windsor, it was up by as much as 300% between 2011 and 2021. What do we know about why there's been such an explosion in growth in self-employed truckers in that time period? Well, the category that we looked at to try and answer the question of how widespread is this issue of misclassification, we did see this

enormous growth in self-employed drivers with no paid help, which captures some legitimate owner operators who have their own trucking company and own their truck and do their own thing. But what we sort of heard from experts is that there's no way that a 300% increase would reflect a legitimate increase in the number of real owner operators because buying your own truck is expensive. And the demand is just not there for those types of contractors to fulfill those services. So this category likely captures an increase in this misclassification model where some of these drivers that are being categorized as self-employed should actually be considered employees. And so the timing coincides with a policy that came into place around 2011. It was essentially a

moratorium on penalizing firms who do not report something called fees for, service transaction. So in the context of trucking, that would essentially be like a payment that you make to a self-employed driver to deliver something for you. And so sort of with the aim of reducing red tape in 2011, the Harper government put a pause on penalizing companies who don't fulfill that reporting requirement. And so people in the trucking industry have said that actually led to an explosion of this misclassification. model because there was no scrutiny of it, essentially, from a tax perspective, combined with pretty weak labor enforcement, it sort of paved the way for companies to start doing this

kind of with impunity. So there's this issue of people getting paid less, but some drivers are not getting paid at all. So let's talk about wage theft. We heard about the experience of one truck driver. How big of a problem is wage theft in trucking? I think it's probably the number one thing I heard from drivers alongside safety issues, but there was a lot of frustration with how endemic wage theft has become in the trucking sector. And then when you look at the data we got, you know, trucking makes up 88% of all confirmed wage theft cases amongst federally regulated employers. So it is the overwhelming number of workplace complaints. But what I heard from drivers is that, you know, the system that is meant to not just protect them from work.

wage theft, but to recoup the money for them when, you know, their employer has been found to break the law is really not working. And what we saw in the data is that when the federal government orders trucking companies to pay back their drivers, they've only actually managed to recoup less than 20% of the money that is owed to the drivers themselves. And so I think that the frustration is that what is the disincentive to actually follow the law and pay your workers when, And there's very little that's being done about it. And, you know, you may not even be penalized as an employer for failing to pay your workers. And a lot of drivers describe this pattern of starting off a new job.

You might get your first paycheck, but then they get later and later. And you only get, you know, half the paycheck or increments of the paycheck. And in some cases, once, you know, someone sort of blows the whistle on the employer, they might just shut down and reopen under a new name. and never pay back the wages. Do we know why there's not enforcement out there from the federal government? Well, I think the federal government would argue that they've ramped up their effort. So, you know, Ottawa did make a number of changes since 2021 to address them as classification issue

and also to increase inspections of trucking firms. But we still haven't seen a lot of penalties issued. So we found that really only a handful of employers have. being penalized. And also, I think that the issue around how fragmented the system is, and the fact that companies can just shut down and move to a different jurisdiction, and the communication between the different agencies is not great, really complicates efforts to actually enforce the law and to get workers their money back. Let's talk about training and certification for truckers. What did you find in your investigation there?

Yeah, so sort of parallel to the work that we've been doing around wage theft and safety and misclassification is concerns around how drivers are trained. And again, that falls under provincial jurisdiction, but it plays into this bigger picture of the health of our trucking sector. And so recently there was an auditor general's report in Ontario that really dove into these trucking schools. and found that many of them are actually not providing the required training to drivers. In some cases, they're giving them, you know, half the time in the truck that they're actually required to do to get their certification. In some cases, they're forging documents to make it look like they are providing training that is compliant with the minimum requirements. That's concerning. Yeah, absolutely, because you're sending drivers out there without the skills that they need to.

And they're driving these huge trucks. on our highway. So yeah, that's very concerning. Yeah. And again, I think it comes back to the issue of enforcement because another finding was that, you know, many of these schools had never been inspected. They're not catching companies that are completely evading the minimum requirements to make sure that drivers are safe on the road. What did you find when it comes to safety checks on trucks and trucking companies? Like, how does that look? I guess you're kind of explaining that it's something. things aren't getting checked, but tell me more about that. Yeah, so we also looked at how common it was for trucking firms to have what's called a facility audit, which is essentially like an in-depth

safety audit of your company. So there's different ways that the authorities like keep an eye on tracking firms. One is obviously road enforcement, so, you know, inspection stations on the highway that we all see when we drive down the road. But these facility audits are really a more in-depth way to look at a companies like safety culture and whether their vehicles are being well-maintained, looking at drivers logbooks and how long are they on the road and all that sort of stuff. And so we actually analyzed 7,000 trucking firms in four provinces, and we found that 85% of those companies had never received one of these facility audits. And to critics, I think that is quite alarming because, you know, what one individual in the trucking industry

said to me was, you know, we send out inspectors to restaurants. You know, every restaurant in this province is inspected to make sure that they are complying with food safety laws. But, you know, we can't do that for trucking companies for some reason, despite the fact that they're sharing roads with, you know, families every day on the highway. And so I think especially in light of what we have learned about, you know, the training element as well as, you know, the poor working conditions that are connected to poor safety outcomes, I think that there is a desire to have a greater hands-on approach to the safety inspection piece. Have there been any consequences for bad actors?

I mean, there's certainly been penalties around the misclassification issue. The federal government told me they have issued 24 penalties to trucking firms for misclassifying drivers. There's also actually a public database of trucking firms and all companies who have broken federal labor laws. But when you look at the number of tracking firms that have been publicly listed there and the fines that they've been issued, the fines are pretty small. They sort of maxed out at about $12,000. And so the criticism is that that's simply not enough to disincentivize companies from actually breaking the law. And actually, if you look at all of the trucking firms that have been penalized by Ottawa

over the past few years, the majority of them are listed as having not paid the fine at all, and that compliance has not yet been confirmed at those companies. But I think the concern is that the sort of preventative side of things, that is the in-depth safety audits going into a company. place of business and actually looking at things and preventing an accident before it happens is a real weakness. On that, I'm just curious about any data that we have when it comes to safety on the roads. Do we know anything about that? Well, the most recent data is from 2023, so there is a bit of a gap in our understanding. But what we do know is that between 2021 and

we started to see a little bit of an uptick in terms of the fatality rate and serious injury rate of collisions involving commercial vehicles. And to put into perspective as to, you know, how common this is over that period, there are about 537 fatal collisions involving commercial vehicles. You know, a fairly large percentage of all fatal road crashes do involve big rigs. They are big vehicles that can cause a lot of damage. You know, it is important to say that Canadian roads have gotten a lot safer. So overall, we are seeing big improvements since like 2010, 2011. But we also know that in Ontario, for example, the number of road violations that are being identified amongst commercial vehicles is going up. And again, we know that there are these host of other issues.

like the poor training, the poor working conditions that are linked to road safety. So I think there are sort of concerns about where things are headed. And obviously we need the more recent data to have a complete picture. But the concern is really that many drivers are in this pressure cooker and that it's not good for road safety. What do advocates say they want to see change for truckers and for the industry more broadly? Well, one change that has happened recently is that the federal government has resumed its scrutiny of the misclassification issue on the tax front. So they're dedicating more money to enforcing that piece of things.

So I think that was really welcome by many in the trucking industry. But there's still very much concern around the labor piece. So wanting to see stronger labor enforcement and greater penalties to disincentivize, you know, actually break. law. And I think there's also a desire to see better coordination and communication amongst these different agencies that are responsible for regulating the sector. So it does come back to this sector is quite fractured and fragmented and finding a way to fix that so that these poor actors can no longer escape scrutiny. We started this conversation talking about the experience of one truck driver and wage theft and how this is one of the biggest

issues for truckers right now. What about those people who are owed money? Have they been able to get their money back? Is there a chance that they will? Well, I think that's one of the biggest frustrations is that often they don't see that money back. And so, for example, the driver who I spoke to for this story, Reminderset, he won his wage theft claim two years ago now. He's owed $9,000 and the federal government has so far managed to recoup $122. So, So he's out of pocket. And again, I heard that, you know, time and time again that you win your case and you hope that you'll get the money back, but often you don't. And it's just a loss that you sort of have to absorb.

And that can really be financially devastating for people because they're big sums of money. I mean, 10K is not nothing. And I've spoken to drivers who are owed much more than that even. So, yeah, a lot of concern and frustration about ever seeing that money. back again. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on and explaining this really important investigation. Thanks for having me. That was Sarah Moshebzade, an investigative reporter for the globe. If you have questions for Sarah or Mahima, they're doing a live Q&A about their investigation

on Wednesday, June 3rd at 12 p.m. ET on our website. Check the show notes for a link to submit questions in advance. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Cynthia Jimenez is our associate producer. and intern. Ali Graham mixed this episode. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin, and Mikhail Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.