Journalist Exposes $1B Trucking Scam Putting Canadian Lives at Risk

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]Well, a Bmpton truck driver has been sentenced for careless driving.

[00:00:03]>> They're coming through as TFWs, LMAS.

[00:00:07]>> Foreign truck drivers who appear to not know what they're doing. They're not maintaining their gear properly.

[00:00:11]>> The hockey team's bus collided with a semi at the intersection near Tisdale, Saskatchewan. 16 people died. 13 others were injured.

[00:00:19]>> Humble Broncos was a wakeup call.

[00:00:21]>> Driving with sandals, man. Are you even allowed to drive with sandals? I know in Canada you're not allowed to drive with sandals. Your safety is in the hands of the drivers of the trucks.

[00:00:31]>> How dangerous is this current situation?

[00:00:33]Like if I'm going on the road right now, like how would you describe the danger level?

[00:00:37]>> I would say for me that's my likeliest way to die right now.

[00:00:43]>> There does seem to be an over representation of Indian origin drivers in these cases of fatalities. Do you think there's that element there where this issue is not being discussed in the way that it should because people are scared to be called racist journalism and commentary one year anniversary.

[00:01:02]>> I don't believe journalism being funded by the government. You have to rebuild the foundation. You have to retell the story conservative news that actually matters.

[00:01:11]>> I hence I think they should answer their questions especially if they're politically charged.

[00:01:17]Today we're talking about an absolutely shocking scandal in Canada's trucking industry. A scandal that is costing Canadian taxpayers up to a billion dollars a year. But the money is far from the worst part of all of this.

[00:01:34]Because according to those in the trucking industry, this scam is putting the lives of Canadians at risk. The scam is called Drivers Inc. On paper, it is assumed that classifies drivers as independent contractors instead of employees to avoid payroll taxes, benefits, labor protections. And this is all creating a massive underground economy. But dig deeper and there are far more disturbing allegations such as foreign drivers who lack basic knowledge about how their big and heavy trucks work. trucks that are not well-maintained being sent onto Canadian highways and drivers being made to work dangerously long hours. And meanwhile, just open social media and it seems that every day there is a new dangerous truck incident. And there seems to be a pattern with the origin of some of these drivers, which begs the question, is Canada letting unqualified foreign drivers onto our roads? Now, the Liberals will tell you they're taking action, but when you look at what the Liberals are doing, they seem more concerned about the loss in tax revenue than about the safety risks this poses to Canadians. Joining me on the podcast today is Jamie Sarinac. She is a columnist at the National Post and one of the only journalists in English Canada who is covering this story. We had an interview. It was a shocking conversation that you need to watch and that every Canadian needs to hear. But before we get into this video, be sure you're subscribed because the majority of my viewers are actually not subscribed. Hit the like button, notification bell, and consider getting a paid channel membership. And a quick disclaimer, we are showing several instances of what we consider to be bad examples of driving, truck driving in this video, but we are not implying that those specific drivers are unqualified or foreign or part of Driver's Inc. This is simply to show what the situation has been like on Canada's roads. Well, Jamie, thank you so much for sitting down for this conversation.

[00:03:52]>> Thanks for having me.

[00:03:53]>> Let's get on to the the trucking situation. So, there there's some stories in the news about this whole Drivers Inc. uh scandal, billion dollar scandal. There's a uh for for those who maybe don't know what that is, how would you describe that situation?

[00:04:05]>> There is a large immigration pipeline into Canada uh bringing temporary often temporary foreign workers in to work as truck drivers. They will pay for their permits um which is not supposed to be allowed or I mean it is not allowed.

[00:04:22]They will give the company money to drive and get that permit set up.

[00:04:27]Company makes bank because these are thousands of dollars usually and the driver u might not be very safe for our roads.

[00:04:35]>> How how recent is this? cuz I know like there's been cases like the humble Broncos in the past, but you know, we know Jamie since 2022 there has been a complete opening of the floodgates and we've seen all sorts of stuff we would have never imagined before. Is this one of those postcoavid Trudeau phenomenons or was has this been a long-standing issue?

[00:04:57]>> Humbled Broncos was a wakeup call and it was it's part of this line. If we're drawing a straight line from then to now, it's it's still part of it obviously, but it it does seem to have ramped up postco just due to the amount of permits being handed out the prevalence of foreign truck drivers on the road. There have been cases since the humble Broncos as well of collisions that are fatal that are that involve a a foreign driver who was not paying attention or not maintaining his gear properly. um they just haven't been as flashy or as as media as as viral as as the Hubble Broncos situation.

[00:05:35]>> There's these um these cases of these schools or there's one in Bmpton and it was basically like a fraudulent driving school and there was a case in Montreal a story and this made the French media and they did an undercover investigation. He was like if you give me the money I promise you will pass.

[00:05:53]What they did for the exams is they would make the people wear turbans or hijabs and they would stick airpods into the ears to be able then and then oh I have to wear my religious symbol and then they would give them all the answers to the questions on on the exam.

[00:06:06]How prevalent is this? Do you know anything about these fraudulent schools?

[00:06:11]>> I can't speak to prevalence. I'm not sure. It's actually difficult to speak to prevalence of anything with this because provincial governments and the federal government have been terrible on data collection. They've just been astoundingly poor. You would think that if you were bringing in a whole bunch of foreign truck drivers, you might be tracking data that goes with it to be able to show the public that this isn't causing a public safety risk. They are not doing that. And if you ask them for it, they'll just say, "We hold everyone to equal standards. Go away now." Which is not a great answer. So prevalence, difficult to answer. Have there been fraudulent schools? Yes, some have been uh shot. I think there have been some that were shut down recently as well in Alberta, which is a plus. The details I don't know so much about because usually when it comes to this stuff, >> provincial governments are thin on details. I'm not sure why. I think maybe there might be just a hesitancy to put details of individual rule breakers on the public record. Yes, >> Canada is a very tight-lipped country.

[00:07:15]People are very concerned about privacy.

[00:07:17]Privacy interests usually take precedence over public being informed.

[00:07:22]So, I'll leave you with that.

[00:07:24]>> We don't actually know how bad this problem is is what you're telling me.

[00:07:27]>> Yeah. All we have is scanning the media reports. Um, there are other resources like there's a Facebook group called Skilled Truckers Canada and that is mostly truckers but also people who are on the highway frequently and and care about this stuff. So, it's really just a community-based page where they log trucker incidents and that is a very interesting page because you start to see the same names come up um company names. So that's a helpful resource, but um it's kind of the best we have.

[00:08:02]>> In one of your columns, you said there's a trend or you know from from what we're able to see, there's a particular country where these people tend to come from. Can you maybe elaborate on on on what that is and why that is too is I think also an important question.

[00:08:20]>> Yeah, the country is India. Um lots of drivers are coming here from India. um a lot of Punjabi drivers but not not just that some Pakistani and just in general from Middle Eastern region because some of these drivers they'll go to the Middle East and drive for a while because straight desert roads are very easy to drive on compared to winter windy roads here. But yeah, there are there does seem to be an over representation of Indian origin drivers in these cases of fatalities and and just horrible stories of of people dying on the highway at the coll or in a collision with with a trucker. So as to is that statistically um significant, we again it's hard to say because we don't actually have that number. If you look though in media headlines, very hard to find stories where it doesn't involve a trucker who appears to be of Indian origin and not just headlines as well. You also have published court decisions >> and that's another one again same trend.

[00:09:28]>> A lot of people from that region of the world >> would be nice to have statistics on this. Do you think that to me this is a huge huge problem regardless of where the people come from? It should be top news and yet it's not. You're one of the only ones writing about it. Do you think that the mainstream media is scared about talking about this issue the way that the British media was scared to talk about, let's say, the grooming gangs? Do you think they're scared of being called racist, so that's why they're choosing? Sometimes they won't even release the name of of the drivers, right? Like they'll you see the media, they'll try to hide. Do you think there's that element there where this issue is not being discussed in the way that it should because people are scared to be called racist?

[00:10:09]>> Oh yeah, that that's top of mind. So the racism fear and then combined with that the privacy fear. For some reason with trucking incidents where a trucker is not paying attention and kills someone, it seems to take rising to the level of criminal charges to get their name on the public record.

[00:10:29]There are there's a level down from that, a rung down in severity where they they will charge the trucker with a driving or a traffic infraction, which is provincial. It's regulatory. It's not criminal. So, you can kill someone with your car and not ever have your name on the public record if they only go the provincial offenses route. And >> that could be changed. There could be a way to deal with this. You could just legislate that the name of a driver being charged in a fatality situation is not a matter of privacy just to give that permission on paper saying you can release this. But it seems that that is that's the exception to the rule is having these names out in in the open.

[00:11:13]And oh can I add one more thing?

[00:11:14]>> Sure. Yeah. This is a problem both ways because there is already a public perception, very strong popular perception that all of the drivers doing this are from India or Pakistan or that region of the world. It isn't actually always the case though. So if you withhold the identity of drivers, people just fill in the gaps and that can actually go against helping ease the public perception.

[00:11:39]>> Yeah. Um, some time ago there was a driver in I believe Quebec who tried to pull a U-turn across a highway and we we know how that went in the US that was a very huge controversial high-profile collision that killed people. Similar thing happened in Quebec some time ago and it wasn't until weeks later, perhaps months later, that the name of the guy finally came out. He was a white guy from Quebec, but the public perception, the Facebook comments Yeah. were very angry.

[00:12:11]>> No, I I can see that. And of course on the on the opposite side, there was a lot of lawful licensed Indian and seek truckers. I remember there were the convoy for example. Um there was Mocha Ber Berajan who's based here in Alberta interviewed a Canadian-B born Punjabi truck driver who was raging mad because he said that there's a lot of people like him whose reputation has been ruined by these new folks. So I think that's a good point. When we talk about lives being at risk, how dangerous is this current situation? Like if I'm going on the road right now, like how would you describe the danger level? I would say for me that's my likeliest way to die right now is getting um smushed by a trucker because I I'll use the highway from time to time. I'm not always there because my job is not taking me across the province at all times. But for a lot of these people, they are always on the highway. Your safety is in the hands of the drivers of the trucks because if you run into an 18-wheeler, the the sheer mass of that vehicle will crush you. You have to be very lucky to survive that kind of thing. It's it's truly horrific. So, how dangerous is it? It's very dangerous.

[00:13:21]It's hard to put into words, you know.

[00:13:23]Um, I was run off the road by a trucker once, and I don't know who was in the cab. I have no idea who was in the cab, but that was just a moment where I I saw how close my life came to being under threat. Thankfully, I was on the prairies, so it was really easy to go off onto the shoulder, half into the ditch.

[00:13:39]>> But you have situations in the mountains, in the Rockies, in the Canadian Shield, Northern Ontario, where it's just rock face. you have nowhere to go if the trucker isn't paying attention and crosses the center line or rushes into your lane as you're passing. So I I think to those times on the road and yeah, it simply is a real risk. You have to have your wits about you, your eyes up, but your life is in their hands.

[00:14:05]They might not care. I've heard um there's some cases where it's like the the people that are the drivers are um they're they're almost like victims in the sense that they're promised this great life in Canada, but then they're made to be these these truck drivers and they themselves are put into unsafe situations. What what are your thoughts on >> Yeah, I've heard that too. Um, they'll talk about driving wise, they'll be encouraged to lie about their hours. Um, or they will have paid a lot of money to be scammed into this illegal situation where they shouldn't actually have a driving permit, but their employer found a way to get them that.

[00:14:48]I don't buy the victim narrative. I don't feel a lot of sympathy because on the alternative side of this is the Canadians who are getting killed by foreign truck drivers on the highway.

[00:14:58]foreign truck drivers who appear to not know what they're doing. They're not maintaining their gear properly. A lot goes into truck driving. Um, even if you want to do regular truck driving for commercial purposes out to sites and whatnot, there's a lot of checks that go into keeping your truck up to speed. So, for driving an 18-wheeler, it's it's a lot more.

[00:15:20]>> Yes, >> it's very significant. And they don't seem to be actually doing that. So, people are dying basically. And I I guess we should be more concerned about them and not so much.

[00:15:29]>> My last question is is two-part. First, different levels of governments have announced some responses to this issue, including the the Liberals and the Marne. I believe it was part of the budget if I'm not mistaken, looking at some measures to prove the security. Uh do you think from from what you've seen from the governments, are the responses far enough? And is there anything at UTI needs additional that needs to be done on this situation? Well, first I would say statistics and that isn't on anyone's radar. No one's really looking to change what data is get gathered because if they were to gather unflattering statistics, I don't think they want to deal with that.

[00:16:04]>> So, for the purpose of social cohesion, they're just not. But that's something that needs to be done in general for crime as well, but particularly for trucking. Um, other things, language requirements, you know, it should be that these drivers are good at speaking English. That's not always the case. Some of these companies, it does seem like when they when when they're doing their day-to-day operations, they're doing it in maybe their home language. And I'm I'm not certain, but maybe the rest of Engle Canada can look to Quebec as to how they do language regulation and look at implementing something similar here for English because if the language of work is not English, especially in trucking, that can cause safety problems later on.

[00:16:49]You know, it's >> turns, right?

[00:16:52]>> Exactly.

[00:16:53]>> Okay. Okay. Well, Jamie, these were all my questions. So, thanks so much for coming by. It was nice to do this in person. I know we've done this virtually before, so thank you.

[00:17:01]>> Thanks for having me.

[00:17:02]>> Well, this sums up our interview. It's quite shocking. If you agree, sign the petition to demand that our roads be made safer. I want to know your thoughts, so comment them down below as well. Hit the notification bell. Be sure you're subscribing. Consider getting that paid channel membership because I don't take a dime from government subsidies, unlike the legacy media.

[00:17:23]Thank you so much for watching and until next time, God bless.