Drivers Inc. Unfair competition and tax evasion, and real world consequences for drivers, law-abiding businesses, and families sharing the road.

Welcome to Finding Solutions.

I'm Dan Albas, the member of Parliament for Ogunnaug and Lake West, South Kelowna.

Happy to have you with us today.

On this show, we try to have honest conversations about the real issues affecting Canadians, not just what's going wrong, but what practical steps can be made to make things better.

Today's episode is about an issue that touches public safety, workers' rights, tax fairness, and the future of Canada's trucking industry, Drivers Inc. It's a topic that has been back in the national spotlight with a deep investigative expose by the Globe and Mail, which raises serious questions about labor abuse, weak oversight, and safety gaps in the trucking sector.

I'm joined today by Stephen Lukowski, president and the CEO of the Canadian Trucking Alliance.

Stephen also leads the Ontario Trucking Association, and he's spent decades working on trucking policy safety, labour standards, compliance and supply chain issues.

His perspective matters because he has not only been sounding the alarm on this issue for years, not only about the unfair competition and tax evasion, but about the real world consequences for drivers, law-abiding businesses and families sharing the road.

He's also been publicly calling for stronger enforcement, better national data sharing, more audits, and reforms to remove unsafe operators from the system.

And this matters because Canadians should be able to trust that the rules protecting safety on our highways are being enforced.

They should be able to trust that workers aren't being exploited, that honest businesses are not being undercut, and that governments are doing their job when dangerous loopholes appear.

In my own conversation with Ogunog and trucking businesses, including longstanding generational companies like Sutco and Barry and Smith, among others, I've heard real concerns about the viability about the industry when these illegal practices, unsafe operations, and lack of enforcement are allowed to continue.

In this conversation, we're going to talk about what Drivers Inc. is, how it affects both the industry and the public, and where governments have fallen short.

So Stephen, I want to thank you for making the time for us to be with here today to talk about this serious issue.