MTO Working To Adopt National Inspection Standard

There has been a wide gap between Ontario’s trucking regulations and the National Safety Code Standard for a number of years now.

Hence, the Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) is collaborating with the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) in order to harmonize the regulations and standards which govern the trucking industry. Changes to annual safety inspections, motor vehicle inspection stations and commercial motor vehicle inspections were the amendments made.

The OTA noted that it had first recommended harmonization back in 1997.

A lot has changed since then — the gap between Ontario‚s regulations and the NSC standard had widened and certain aspects of the NSC standard itself had become out-dated — so we needed to work with MTO to ensure a common sense, modernized approach.

- David Bradley-Ontario Trucking Association

The general consensus from all parties involved in this process is that a smooth transition from the current regulation to the national standard could be achieved using a migration protocol. MTO would also have to commit themselves to ensuring that everyone follows the same standards. There is also talk of incentives being issued to companies which go above and beyond the national standard when maintaining their equipment.

If you’re maintaining your equipment now and have adequate preventative maintenance programs in place you should see little or no difference between the new rules and the old one’s aside from getting used to the format of the national standard.

- David Bradley-Ontario Trucking Association

The sub-committee specifically established by the OTA from their Maintenance Council have reviewed the following main items in regards to the modernizing and harmonizing of the two sets of regulations:

1. Incentives – A reduction in the administrative burden associated with annual inspections will be granted to carriers with a strong safety record.
2. Out dated technical issues related to transition – The OTA identified 8 technical issues which are cited by the national standard  which are both nonsensical and irrelevant to current truck technologies. MTO has agreed not to include these parts of the national standard.
3. Inspection times – To gather more valid vehicle information, the new inspection format could take 5-10 minutes longer to complete. Since most businesses already conduct more in-depth inspections than what’s called for by the national standard, there was no time added to certain sections of the inspection regulations.
4. Enforcement – The MTO is looking at implementing a more visible enforcement system in their Motor Vehicle Inspection Station (MVIS) program. To ensure that the difference between public stations and fleet stations is not abused, MTO is going to tighten up the loopholes with the programs’ regulations.