Truckers Take 'Fix Trucking Now' Demands to Ottawa

On the final day of National Trucking Week, drivers from across Canada gathered in Brampton, Ontario to press Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu and the Carney government to stop wage theft, end misclassification, enforce the Canada Labour Code and invest in road health and safety under a campaign they call "Fix Trucking Now."

Truck drivers from across Canada closed out National Trucking Week not with a celebration but with a demand. Gathering in Brampton, Ontario — the dense cluster of yards, terminals and carrier offices that functions as the operational heart of the country's long-haul industry — drivers delivered a direct message to the Carney government under the banner "Fix Trucking Now."

The appeal was addressed to Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu and other government representatives. The asks were specific: stop wage theft, end misclassification, address health and safety conditions on the job, enforce the Canada Labour Code as written, and invest in road health and safety. Each of those is a separate fight, but drivers presented them as a single problem with a single cause — rules that exist on paper and are not consistently applied on the ground.

Why Brampton Is Where This Argument Happens

Brampton is not an incidental backdrop. The city and the surrounding Peel Region sit at the junction of Canada's busiest freight corridors, funneling goods between southern Ontario's manufacturing base, the Windsor-Detroit crossing and the Quebec market. A large share of the country's owner-operators and small fleets are based within a short drive of where the drivers assembled. When labour conditions in Canadian trucking get contested, they get contested here.

That geography matters for the policy fight too. Federally regulated trucking — carriers moving freight across provincial or international borders — falls under the Canada Labour Code rather than provincial employment standards. That is the statute drivers named in Brampton, and it is the lever they are asking Ottawa to pull. Hajdu's portfolio, Jobs and Families, is the department that owns it.

What Misclassification Actually Means for a Driver's Pay

Misclassification is the technical term at the centre of the drivers' complaint, and it is worth unpacking because the mechanics explain why wage theft and safety show up on the same list of demands.

A driver who is an employee is entitled to the protections written into the Canada Labour Code: minimum wage, overtime after statutory hours, vacation pay, statutory holidays, termination notice, and coverage under occupational health and safety provisions. A driver classified as an independent contractor gets none of that automatically. The contractor is responsible for their own remittances, their own insurance, their own downtime.

The dispute is over drivers who do the work of employees — dispatched by a carrier, driving the carrier's routes, on the carrier's schedule — while being papered as independent businesses. When that reclassification happens on paper only, the savings do not come from efficiency. They come out of the driver's compensation and out of the public purse in unremitted payroll contributions. That is the link the Brampton drivers drew to wage theft: the two are not separate grievances so much as cause and effect.

Safety follows the same logic. A driver paid by the mile or by the load, with no overtime floor and no employment security, faces a structural incentive to keep moving. Rest becomes an unpaid cost borne entirely by the individual. Drivers raising health and safety in the same breath as classification are arguing that fatigue on Canadian highways is not purely a behavioural problem — it is a pay-structure problem.

Enforcement, Not New Law, Is the Ask

The most telling word in the drivers' message is "enforce." They did not ask the government to write a new statute. They asked it to apply the one already on the books.

That framing narrows the policy conversation considerably. Enforcement is a question of inspectors, audits, penalties and the political willingness to name carriers that are found offside. It is a budget line and an administrative posture, not a legislative agenda requiring a bill and a parliamentary calendar. It also means the drivers' demands can, in principle, be met without a vote — which is precisely why the campaign is aimed at a minister rather than at Parliament.

The Brampton event was reported by Financial Post, which noted the drivers' call for the government to take on what they described as bad bosses in the sector.

The Competitive Pressure Behind the Complaint

There is a business dimension to this that extends well beyond labour advocacy. Trucking is a fragmented, low-margin industry where a carrier's cost base is dominated by fuel, equipment and drivers. If one operator can strip payroll obligations out of its cost structure through classification arrangements and a competitor cannot, the compliant carrier is bidding against a rate it structurally cannot match.

That is why enforcement campaigns in trucking often draw support from parts of the industry itself, not only from drivers. Compliant fleets have a direct commercial interest in a level enforcement regime. Shippers, meanwhile, buy capacity on price and are largely insulated from how that price is achieved — which puts the burden of correction back on the regulator.

For the broader economy, the stakes are the freight rate itself. Trucking moves the overwhelming majority of Canadian domestic goods by value. Any enforcement action that raises the industry's labour cost base will eventually surface somewhere in landed costs for retailers, manufacturers and grocers. That is an argument for doing it deliberately, not an argument against doing it.

What to Watch From Here

Three things will indicate whether the Brampton message lands. First, whether Hajdu's department responds with a concrete enforcement commitment — audit volumes, inspection targets, or a dedicated compliance program for federally regulated carriers — rather than a statement of concern.

Second, whether classification tests for federally regulated trucking get clarified. Enforcement is only as strong as the standard being enforced; ambiguity about who counts as an employee is what makes the arrangements possible in the first place.

Third, whether the road safety investment piece of the demand shows up in a budget. Drivers linked highway infrastructure and rest facilities to the same set of health and safety concerns as their pay. Infrastructure spending is visible and measurable in a way that enforcement activity often is not, which makes it the easier commitment to make — and the easier one to point to in place of the harder one.

Markets closed higher across the board ahead of the weekend, with the S&P 500 tracker finishing at $764.29, up 0.85% on the day, and the Dow 30 tracker at $525.79, up 0.97%, as of the last trade Friday. Canadian trucking labour policy is not a market-moving story on a single session. It is the kind of cost-structure question that shows up in freight rates and consumer prices over years.

Key facts

• Location: Brampton, Ontario, on the last day of National Trucking Week
• Campaign: "Fix Trucking Now," directed at the Carney government
• Minister named: Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu
• Core demands: End wage theft and misclassification, enforce the Canada Labour Code, invest in road health and safety

Frequently asked questions

What is the "Fix Trucking Now" campaign asking for?

Drivers gathered in Brampton, Ontario are asking the federal government to stop wage theft in the trucking sector, end driver misclassification, address health and safety conditions, enforce the Canada Labour Code as it is already written, and invest in road health and safety. The demands were directed at Jobs and Families Minister Patty Hajdu and other government representatives.

Why does the Canada Labour Code apply to truck drivers?

Trucking that crosses provincial or international borders is federally regulated in Canada, which places it under the Canada Labour Code rather than provincial employment standards. The Code sets minimum wage, overtime, vacation pay, termination notice and occupational health and safety rules for those workers. That is why the drivers addressed a federal minister rather than a provincial one.

What is driver misclassification?

Misclassification occurs when a worker who functions as an employee — dispatched by a carrier, driving its routes on its schedule — is papered as an independent contractor. The arrangement removes the carrier's obligation to provide overtime, vacation pay, termination notice and payroll remittances, shifting those costs onto the driver and reducing amounts owed to public programs.

Why do drivers link pay structure to road safety?

When drivers are paid per mile or per load with no overtime floor and no employment protection, rest time becomes an unpaid cost the individual absorbs. That creates a financial incentive to keep driving. The Brampton drivers argued that highway fatigue is therefore partly a compensation-design problem rather than purely a matter of individual behaviour or hours-of-service rules.

Are the drivers asking for a new law?

No. The central word in their message is "enforce." They are asking the government to apply the Canada Labour Code that already exists, which makes this a question of inspectors, audits, penalties and administrative will rather than legislation. That means the demands could in principle be met by ministerial action without a parliamentary vote.

Could stronger enforcement affect freight costs?

Potentially. Trucking is a fragmented, low-margin industry where driver pay is a major cost line. If enforcement removes the ability of some carriers to strip payroll obligations from their cost base, the industry's labour costs rise across the board and would eventually surface in freight rates charged to shippers, and from there in landed costs for retailers and manufacturers.

Sources

• Truck Drivers Say: “Minister Hajdu: It’s time to take on bad bosses, enforce the Canada Labour Code, and invest in road health and safety.” — Financial Post

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