Canada’s New Democrats have echoed CTA’s call for CRA to enforce an action plan to end Driver Inc.
In a letter to National Revenue Minister Bibeau, MP Niki Ashton (Churchill-Keewatinook Aski), NDP Critic for Tax Fairness and Inequality, highlighted the issue of Driver Inc and the government’s need to address the matter.
“It’s not lost on us in the NDP how much the Liberal government looks the other way when large corporations mischaracterize their workers to get out of paying fair wages, benefits and taxes,” she wrote. ”This is all too common in many industries, including in the trucking industry where your department promised to release a strategy to crack down on this exploitation and support workers taken advantage by the ‘Drivers Inc’ scam but have failed to do so.”
In the Fall of 2022, Minister Freeland stated in her Economic Statement that CRA would develop an action plan to deal with Driver Inc and that plan would be laid out in Budget 2023. Budget 2023 came and went without a plan being published.
“The Canadian public is being robbed of taxpayer dollars needed to build schools, hospitals and infrastructure for Canadians. Instead, the government is allowing this critical revenue to funnel into the underground economy by a growing number of companies engaged in the Driver Inc scam,” said CTA president Stephen Laskowski. “If this pattern of tax enforcement neglect continues, the trucking industry will soon be filled with fleet owners who believe that paying tax and contributing to the Canadian social network is a voluntary option. The CRA needs to remind these owners that tax compliance is not an option.”