The Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) is calling on federal and provincial governments to build on the momentum of recent regulatory commitments, including the transition to 24/7 operations of commercial vehicle inspection stations, such as the recently expanded Shuniah Truck Inspection Station.
The proposal serves as a major operational pillar of the OTA’s newly relaunched provincial safety campaign—Stop Illegal Trucking, which encourages Queen’s Park to fully deploy the sustained enforcement mechanisms required to protect Ontario families, honest businesses, and transport workers from non-compliant practices. The OTA maintains that the most effective mechanism to advance highway safety, regulatory compliance, and supply chain oversight is through structured boots on the ground around the clock operations and collaborative enforcement efforts between provincial and federal authorities.
To achieve this OTA has formally proposed a joint Federal-Provincial Enforcement Pilot Project involving all relevant regulatory authorities at the Thunder Bay East Inspection Station Complex in Shuniah, Ontario.
The viability of this combined approach is backed by quantifiable data. The recent 2026 Driver Inc. Joint Enforcement Initiative – which brought together the Ministry of Transportation (MTO), the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), and the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) –successfully executed 676 specialized MTO inspections and 1,599 multi-agency compliance interactions at 14 inspection station locations across the province.
« The results from the recent joint enforcement initiatives prove that multi-agency action works to dismantle underground economic practices, » says Stephen Laskowski, president and CEO of the OTA. « By establishing a permanent, combined operations base at the Thunder Bay gateway, both levels of government can maximize resource efficiency and send an unmistakable message that compliance for all regulatory touch points in trucking is a universal operational requirement in this province. »
A joint enforcement project at this location would deliver benefits across three key areas:
- Safety and Compliance: Enforcing a simultaneous, multi-jurisdictional focus on serious vehicle safety violations, aggressive driving, corporate tax evasion, the « Driver Inc. » misclassification model, immigration-related abuses, forced labour, cargo security, and commercial vehicle asset interdiction.
- Resource Efficiency: Enabling the pooling of provincial and federal oversight resources to maximize enforcement capacity and address the full spectrum of non-compliant carrier operations at a single location.
- Empirical Data Collection: Generating high-value tracking data to help federal and provincial oversight bodies determine where and how similar joint-enforcement resources can be strategically deployed across major Canadian freight corridors.
The Thunder Bay East Inspection Station Complex in Shuniah is ideally suited for this pilot project, following its recent operational transition to round-the-clock, 24/7 staffing. Strategically situated along the Highway 11/17 corridor, this facility oversees the sole truck route connecting Western and Eastern Canada. This critical bottleneck carries more than 1,300 heavy transport trucks and over $60 million in essential trade commodities on a daily basis.
« The infrastructure is built, the 24/7 staffing framework is active, and the initial data profile is clear, » said Geoff Wood, OTA’s Senior VP, Policy. « This pilot project represents a high-impact mechanism to protect law-abiding carriers, secure the supply chain, and ensure the safety of Ontario families sharing the road with heavy trucks. OTA’s Stop Illegal Trucking campaign is focused on converting temporary blitzes into permanent oversight, and the OTA is ready to collaborate with all government partners to launch this initiative immediately. »
If successful, the OTA is confident that this combined operations project will serve as a blueprint for adoption in other jurisdictions across the country for visible, proactive enforcement and enhanced supply chain security.
