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Good morning! It’s Wendy Cox in Vancouver.

There were 35,004 transport carriers active in British Columbia last year, the vast majority of them being trucking companies. The number includes owners who operate a single vehicle and it includes some companies with fleets of 50 or more trucks.

Those companies each have a safety rating from the province, but they don’t get that rating because someone has looked their businesses and their vehicles over. Rather, according to Ministry of Transport figures released to The Globe and Mail covering 2019, 96 per cent of those companies have a satisfactory rating despite not having an audit. The satisfactory-unaudited rating reflects the fact that the company has not had any violations that would raise flags about its safety record.

In the wake of the horrific bus crash that killed 16 members of the Humboldt Broncos hockey team in 2018, Globe reporters were hearing from members of the trucking industry that more scrutiny is needed.

The Globe’s investigative reporter, Kathy Tomlinson, spent some time last year looking into a concerning pattern of safety violations by drivers who she discovered were ill-equipped to do the job. She found that young foreign nationals are routinely steered into trucking by some immigration consultants in collaboration with particular trucking firms. Both take cash payoffs from recruits in exchange for jobs, even though that practice is illegal.

The story prompted Ottawa to investigate “all allegations of abuse” of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. In the meantime, the B.C. government ordered a sweeping review of its practices in the industry.

In reporting on the story, Kathy came across another odd category in the safety ratings, something called “unsatisfactory-unaudited.” How many companies were in that category? It wasn’t an answer that would come to Kathy by the time of her deadline.

So reporter Wendy Stueck took up the chase, asking the ministry repeatedly for more information about the number of companies that, according to the definition of the rating, have racked up enough violations to warrant extra monitoring but have not been audited. In other words, the companies in this category have managed to trigger a caution, but they may not necessarily have been shut down as a result. Meantime, an audit to confirm their safety practices is still pending, sometimes for more than a year, as Wendy reports today.

The Ministry of Transportation confirmed in an email to Wendy in December the number of carriers in that category is 76. That’s down dramatically from October, when the number was 153. But as Transport Minister Claire Trevena said in an interview with The Globe: “I’m not okay with any having that [unsatisfactory-unaudited] status,” Ms. Trevena said, adding “I am never going to be happy until we get a zero unsatisfactory rating or zero non-compliance.”

The ministry took pains to point out that 76 carriers amounts to only 0.22 per cent of all the carriers on the road. However, the number is still cause for concern, especially because it’s not known how many trucks those 76 carriers operate; the ministry wouldn’t release that number. For perspective, it’s difficult to imagine an airline being comfortable with knowing that 0.22 per cent of its pilots have safety concerns.

Ms. Trevena has said her ministry is hiring additional staff and is working through carrier-safety audits.

But the province only has 15 inspectors. This is up by only one from 1996, when B.C.’s auditor general’s office issued a report raising concerns that the ministry could not audit carriers on a random basis within a reasonable time. In a second report in 2018, the office repeated the concern, noting that the number of investigations has stayed about the same, even as the number of carriers increased.

“The issue is how long does it take for these [carriers] to be audited and either come into compliance or be punted?” says Dave Earle, president of the B.C. Trucking Association.

This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief James Keller. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here. This is a new project and we’ll be experimenting as we go, so let us know what you think.

Around the West:

BIRTH ALERTS: Manitoba has become the latest province to scrap the practice of birth alerts, in which hospitals alert child-welfare agencies about new babies deemed at risk because of their mother’s backgrounds. B.C. has already banned the practice, while Saskatchewan and Alberta are conducting their own reviews. Indigenous groups have been calling for an end to birth alerts, which they say contribute to the alarming proportion of children from First Nations communities who end up in care.

RURAL POLICING: The Alberta government’s focus on rural crime has largely focused on policing and punishment, including a plan to arm wildlife officers, sheriffs and vehicle inspectors and turn them into first responders. Carrie Tait looked into how it will work, what it will cost, and – more important – if it will work. The province’s justice minister, Doug Schweitzer, says it’s about boots on the ground and improving response times.

VANCOUVER RIDESHARE ROLLOUT: From ticketing drivers to lawsuits from the taxi association, the rollout of rideshare services in the Vancouver region has been fraught. The problem is partly because the area’s many municipalities are taking a patchwork approach toward licensing the companies while they try to agree on a regional licence.

KELLY ELLARD’S PAROLE: The woman convicted of Reena Virk’s death in 1997 is getting an extension of her day parole. The decision from the Parole Board of Canada also revealed that Ms. Ellard has had a second child, and noted that parenthood has had a positive effect on her.

CHECKPOINT COMPLAINT: The Wet’suwet’en hereditary clan chiefs and their supporters want a public investigation into the way the RCMP are controlling access along a rural road in northern British Columbia. Harsha Walia, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, said the application of the RCMP’s enforcement at the checkpoint has been “inconsistent, arbitrary and discriminatory.”

TRANS MOUNTAIN EXPANSION: The Federal Court of Appeal is set to release its decision on the latest challenge of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion on Tuesday. Four First Nations from British Columbia filed court challenges after the federal government approved the project a second time last June.

ALCOHOL SCREENING: Calgary police are adopting a controversial breath-test policy for all drivers who are pulled over or go through a checkstop. This is an approach that an anti-drunk-driving group wants forces elsewhere to follow, but one that defence lawyers warn is rife with constitutional pitfalls.

B.C. AUTO INSURANCE: The province’s Attorney-General, David Eby, announced Wednesday that B.C.’s Crown-owned auto insurance monopoly would be rolling out a series of changes in an effort to build more public trust. But, he was clear that this did not include opening up the auto-insurance trade to competition by private insurers.

AI ASSISTANTS: Alberta researchers published a study that found AI assistants, such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, were not very helpful in emergencies. For example, when Matthew Douma informed Alexa he had cut himself and was bleeding, the smart device cued up the pop song Stitches.

ALBERTA SCHOOL CURRICULUMS: The province’s education minister is endorsing a panel report that recommends school children learn all views about climate change along with the value of the province’s oil and gas sector. It’s one of the more polarizing recommendations the report made, which also included standardized literacy and numeracy tests in Grades 1 through 5 to catch and correct any learning difficulties.

WILDFIRES: The dozens of Canadians dispatched to Australia’s devastating wildfires have returned with lessons learned for officials in this country, where places such as B.C. and Alberta have seen record-setting fire seasons in recent years. Two of them, from Parks Canada, have detailed the experience and what skills they brought back.

BREWERIES: As the craft-beer renaissance continues, some breweries on the Prairies are also stepping up their food game, bringing in professional chefs and becoming culinary destinations in their own right.

OPINION:

Adrienne Tanner on the rideshare rollout: “So, what the heck drove Mr. McCallum to snub a service British Columbians have clamoured for since Uber started in Toronto in 2012? The answer is the taxi lobby, which is a powerful political force in B.C., nowhere more so than in Surrey.”

Kelly Cryderman on the Frontier oil sands mine: “One thing became clear in recent days – that the final federal decision on the Teck Resources Ltd. project is more likely going to come down to political wrangling between Alberta and Ottawa rather than the conclusion of a joint-review panel that decided last year it was, overall, in the public interest.”

John Ibbitson on the Conservative leadership race: “Most Canadians will not vote for a political party that ignores global warming. All the major Conservative leadership candidates oppose the federal carbon tax. So have the Tories doomed themselves to perpetual opposition, no matter who wins the leadership in June? Not necessarily. But the next leader will need to be both creative and credible in forging a made-in-provinces plan. Closer co-operation with Alberta could hold the key.”

Lisa Dominato on Vancouver’s tax hike: “The city of Vancouver faces increased costs just as businesses and homeowners do. However, as stewards of the public purse, we need to work harder to innovate and pursue partnerships to make efficient use of public funds. This is something that was absent from the conversation.”

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