PJ The Belt - May 13, 2026


Canada ERUPTS as "New" Truck Drivers TAKE OVER Highways


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

166.38759

Word count

1,623

Sentence count

75

Harmful content

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Humboldt Broncos hockey team's bus collided with a semi-truck, killing 16 people and injuring 13 others. A Brampton truck driver has been sentenced for careless driving. They're coming through as TFWs, LMIAs, foreign truck drivers who appear to not know what they're doing.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Well, a Brampton truck driver has been sentenced for careless driving. 1.00
00:00:03.880 They're coming through as TFWs, LMIAs. 1.00
00:00:07.380 Foreign truck drivers who appear to not know what they're doing. 1.00
00:00:10.160 They're not maintaining their gear properly. 0.95
00:00:11.840 The hockey team's bus collided with a semi at the intersection near Tisdale, Saskatchewan.
00:00:16.580 16 people died, 13 others were injured.
00:00:19.100 Humboldt Broncos was a wake-up call.
00:00:21.640 Driving with sandals, man.
00:00:23.560 Are you even allowed to drive with sandals?
00:00:25.020 I know in Canada you're not allowed to drive with sandals.
00:00:27.380 Your safety is in the hands of the drivers.
00:00:30.000 how many accidents have to happen before our politicians realize that the standards
00:00:36.080 just aren't the same many of these individuals barely speak english so the ability to follow
00:00:42.180 safety guidelines just isn't what it should be and it's been revealed time and time again that
00:00:47.560 the so-called schools that license them are not following proper transportation laws and they
00:00:53.400 only care about the money that they can get so when it's enough enough much of this issue stems
00:00:59.700 from the commercial driver's mandatory entry-level training
00:01:02.780 not meeting provincial standards,
00:01:04.900 an issue that one advocate has been warning about for years.
00:01:08.780 Oversight and compliance was a concern that was raised right out of the gate
00:01:11.540 before it ever came into place.
00:01:13.620 Mike Millian is the president of the Private Motor Truck Council of Canada
00:01:16.740 and says a big part of the problem stems from a lack of resources
00:01:19.860 as there are just eight inspectors in the entire province
00:01:23.180 to audit all 595 registered private career colleges.
00:01:27.260 They simply don't have the capacity.
00:01:28.980 Ontario's Auditor General uncovered private career colleges cutting corners on training hours and skills
00:01:34.260 and found little oversight from the ministries of colleges and transportation.
00:01:38.580 It also found the two ministries have no process to routinely share inspection information.
00:01:43.780 Overall, these findings point to a weakness in oversight, testing consistency,
00:01:48.660 and eligibility requirements that can increase risks to road safety.
00:01:53.360 The auditor sent six people undercover as driving students at six different training providers between June and December of last year.
00:02:00.500 It found that two private career colleges delivered about 60 and 81 training hours, although the required minimum is 103.5.
00:02:09.880 Two of the auditor's students were not taught how to perform left turns at major intersections, nor how to reverse park an emergency stop.
00:02:17.700 Millian says reputable programs typically charge about $10,000.
00:02:21.140 One of the things we've pointed out to the MTO or to the province over the years is, you know, you want to go out and find the bad actors?
00:02:31.040 They're advertising free.
00:02:32.700 They're putting street signs out telling you they're doing training courses for $3,000.
00:02:36.960 Brother, I don't know if you know this, but I think you hit the bridge.
00:02:42.400 Yeah, I like the roof of your truck's missing.
00:02:47.960 Yeah, I don't know if you noticed that.
00:02:51.140 Yeah, no, I say it's a convertible now.
00:02:58.180 How many more avoidable accidents need to happen and how many more innocent lives need to be lost?
00:03:04.240 Exclusive dash cam video, which is now the subject of several law enforcement investigations.
00:03:09.580 It shows a moment a red semi truck plowed into a number of vehicles on the westbound 10 freeway in Ontario just after 1 p.m. yesterday.
00:03:18.120 The driver of this big rig is a 21-year-old man who is now under arrest
00:03:23.080 on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs.
00:03:26.000 And the thing is, this isn't only a problem in the United States.
00:03:29.240 This is also a problem up here in Canada.
00:03:31.360 It's probably an even bigger issue here per capita
00:03:34.400 because Canada's been importing so many temporary foreign workers
00:03:38.240 from India, Pakistan, and the Middle East.
00:03:40.820 Traveling at full throttle, they zigzag between cars, 1.00
00:03:45.620 Overtaking them at frightening speed
00:03:49.160 Sometimes even using the roadside 1.00
00:03:52.620 In Bangladesh, bus drivers are constantly pushing the boundaries of driving
00:03:58.980 Buses are one of the most popular modes of transport in the country
00:04:06.180 But they face fierce competition
00:04:08.820 Get on, it's half price
00:04:12.160 To attract customers, companies are promising to reduce travel times,
00:04:18.660 even if it means taking all sorts of risks.
00:04:22.220 On social media, thousands of videos of daredevil drivers have gone viral.
00:04:32.960 Hello, my name is Ira.
00:04:36.340 This man regularly posts videos of these exhilarating journeys,
00:04:40.260 as they've become a form of entertainment.
00:04:43.160 The drivers are encouraged by the passengers to go ever faster.
00:04:50.460 Thankfully, the Trump administration isn't playing games with this issue.
00:04:54.540 They've now made it mandatory for truckers to actually speak English for a change,
00:04:59.900 if they want to get behind the wheel, that is.
00:05:02.000 And they also need to be American or at least have a green card, 0.94
00:05:04.720 which means that many of these temporary visa holders and even illegal immigrants
00:05:10.260 longer be able to obtain a cdl in the country who can make the justification that somebody should be
00:05:16.260 driving a truck that doesn't speak english can't communicate with law enforcement can't read signs
00:05:21.780 and put people in danger who can justify that well i don't know gavin newsom seems to think
00:05:27.060 that he can but again it is these big 18 wheelers that we see in our roadways but these are drivers
00:05:31.700 who can drive your school bus as well take your kids to school right they don't speak the language
00:05:36.420 And again, when they can't understand signs, we saw the the infamous crash down in Florida where a truck driver was doing a U-turn on a four lane highway.
00:05:47.100 It's that's insanity. But these are the kind of risks that some of these drivers take when they don't understand the rules.
00:05:52.720 They don't understand our culture, but they also don't understand if a crash happens, how to communicate with law enforcement.
00:05:58.580 And so we're going to take all the actions we can in this administration to keep people safe.
00:06:03.160 Again, Gavin Newsom may not care about safety, but I'm going to do all I can to make sure
00:06:07.700 that I prevent the next cataclysmic accident that takes someone's life.
00:06:11.720 And if that's taking money away from Gavin Newsom, that's exactly what we're going to do.
00:06:15.020 Last week, Bhavik Sharma went to the DMV to renew his trucking license, but he was denying.
00:06:19.700 The problem? New rules surrounding the process.
00:06:26.780 As he explains in Hindi, only green card holders and U.S. citizens can get their commercial driver's
00:06:32.040 license renewed good charm has been in the u.s legally for the past 10 years seeking political
00:06:37.020 asylum his final court case is next year he's been driving a truck for the past eight years
00:06:41.980 but now he can't so this guy's been in the united states for 10 freaking years a decade and he can't 0.99
00:06:50.400 speak enough english to have a basic conversation and we're supposed to trust him with a multi-ton
00:06:55.500 heavy-duty equipment to drive it on our roadways safely when he probably can't even read the signs
00:07:03.660 you can't make this stuff up and he's been in the united states again it's not like he just got
00:07:08.820 there although you should speak english if you're gonna go if you're gonna go to the united states
00:07:13.340 to drive a truck you should speak the language but it's not like he just got there like he's got
00:07:18.560 that excuse of like you know what i just got here i'm still learning give me some time he's been in
00:07:22.800 country for 10 years you're not gonna it just doesn't care he's been driving a truck for 10
00:07:30.320 for eight years and he still doesn't speak the language that's insane
00:07:37.680 when asked what comes next he says he's worried trucking paid well the sudden stop and income
00:07:43.040 should have learned english money to send back to his family in india now he will have to start over
00:07:47.760 The U.S. Department of Transportation issued emergency rules that require the DMV to stop issuing commercial driver's licenses, or CDLs, to drivers who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
00:08:00.860 Even those with legal work visas, like Sharma, will be denied.
00:08:04.540 The DOT report says the driver was tested and he could not identify three or four road signs.
00:08:10.140 They did an English test and he failed abysmal, not even close, but how ridiculous is it that somebody would get a commercial driver's license who doesn't understand the language of this country?
00:08:22.060 Look, man, what it comes down to is road safety. There have been way too many accidents, way too many avoidable deaths that continue to occur in North America. They just keep happening. And a big portion of those is because there are people who have a license who shouldn't be behind the wheel to begin with. They shouldn't be licensed. They should have never got one. Many of them get a license illegally.
00:08:45.500 So this is why this is happening. This is why the Trump administration is cracking down on it,
00:08:51.520 just like they're cracking down on it here in Alberta.
00:08:54.140 The province is intervening on dangerous commercial truck driving practices after
00:08:57.880 Transportation Minister Devin Dreschen said a series of investigations, inspections and audits
00:09:03.700 over the past six months uncovered fraudulent behavior in the industry. Now the government
00:09:08.460 says they've shut down five of the schools so far, revoked the licenses from 12 instructors,
00:09:13.820 issued dozens of warnings and levied more than $100,000 in fines.
00:09:18.980 Thirteen commercial trucking companies have also been removed from Alberta's roads
00:09:22.900 due to poor on-road performance, unsafe equipment, or failure to meet mandatory safety standards.
00:09:29.020 The province says it's now working with the federal government to address industry safety concerns,
00:09:33.500 while the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators is also developing a national database
00:09:38.780 to address the loophole that carriers currently use to exploit gaps in interprovincial data sharing and enforcement.