2007 HOS Rule Not Enforced in Western Canada Provinces

By Sarah Godfrey, Staff Reporter

This story appears in the Nov. 26 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

Four of Canada’s western provinces and territories have failed to implement new federal hours-of-service rules, while a fifth has delayed enforcement of them until the end of the year.

As a result, the nation’s largest trucking trade group, the Canadian Trucking Alliance, has demanded the government penalize the provinces.

Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Yukon and Northwest territories have failed to implement the rules that went into effect at the beginning of 2007, largely because of pressure from the logging and oil industries, federal officials said.

British Columbia adopted the new rules on March 15, but has delayed enforcement on its oil and gas industries until the end of the year, an official there said.

CTA Chief Executive Officer David Bradley said in a statement earlier this month that the group sees “a disturbing trend emerging that, if left unchecked, will negate the basic principles of safety and regulatory harmonization.”

CTA said it asked the federal Minister of Transport to withhold highway infrastructure funds from the noncomplying provinces.

Transport Canada, the nation’s federal transportation agency, and CTA said the nation’s eastern provinces, including Ontario, Manitoba and Quebec, have adopted the new regulations, which cut allowed driving time by three hours.

Bob Dolyniuk, general manager of the Manitoba Trucking Association, said the pick-and-choose approach of hours-of-service compliance negatively affects compliant provinces, such as his own. “If a carrier out of Manitoba wanted to compete within Alberta, we’d be at an economic and opportunistic disadvantage,” he said.

Canada’s new rule cut driving time to 13 hours in a 14-hour on-duty period, followed by 10 hours of rest within any 24-hour period, with eight of the 10 rest hours taken consecutively. The old rule allowed 16 hours of driving time, followed by eight hours of rest and had no limit on the length of work day (1-1, p. 27).

In the United States, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is expected to issue a revised driver-hours rule soon.

Earlier this year a federal court threw out portions of the U.S. rule, which permitted 11 hours of driving in a 14-hour work period and allowed drivers to reset their weekly hours after a 34-hour rest period.

CTA said it is concerned that some provinces and territories are considering hours-of-service exemptions for both the logging and oil and gas industries and also for vehicles below a weight of 11,794 kilogram, even though the National Safety Code weight threshold has long been 4,500 kilograms. Transport Canada said the 11,794-kg and 4,500-kg vehicle thresholds are similar to the 26,000-pound and 10,000-pound classifications in the United States.

CTA said sector-specific or regional exemptions are unfair and unsafe.

Brian Orrbine, chief of motor carriers in the road safety directorate of Transport Canada, said Canada’s protocol for adopting the hours-of-service rule was similar to the U.S. process by which the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration makes changes and expects states to amend their laws accordingly.

“New federal hours-of-service regulations came into force Jan. 1, 2007,” Orrbine said. “Then, each of the provinces and territories put into place local — or what you’d call ‘intrastate’ — regulations to mirror the federal regs. In Canada, territories and provinces enforce federal regs.

“The western provinces, in addition to saying they may not enforce some federal regulations, are also saying they want to increase weight threshold and are suggesting they may be prepared to do so on their own,” Orrbine added.

“The deal was, and it made a lot of sense, that there would be a uniform roll-out on Jan. 1, 2007, and both the provincial governments and the federal government would introduce the same regulations,” said Louise Yako, a vice president at the British Columbia Trucking Association. “Things didn’t roll out as smoothly as everyone had hoped.”

Yako said British Columbia adopted the regulations for intraprovincial carriers on March 15, but she added that the province extended an educational enforcement period that was to expire July 1 until the end of the year for oil and gas industries.

Kim Durdle, director of carrier services for Alberta Infrastructure and Transportation, said the province is looking to adopt the federal rules, at least in part.

Durdle said Transport Canada has jurisdiction over trucks moving from one province to another and that Alberta does require extra-provincial carriers to comply with federal regulations. “That amounts to 60% of the [commercial trucks] registered in Alberta,” she said.

 “From a provincial perspective, we are looking at changing the [provincial] regulations so that they are the same as federal regulations, but some industry groups have serious issues with the new regulations,” she said, citing logging and oil interests.