The union urges Ottawa to move from words to action against the Driver Inc. scheme
LAVAL, QC, July 29, 2026 — Teamsters Canada is reacting to an investigation published today by La Presse, which reveals that more than 4,500 federal labour standards complaints were pending at the end of September 2025, over a third of them from the road transportation sector. Worse still, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) itself admits, in an internal document obtained by the newspaper, that its inability to crack down is fuelling the Driver Inc. scheme and signals to non-compliant companies that the consequences of their actions are negligible or non-existent.
These grim findings confirm what the union has been repeating for years: as long as the companies orchestrating the Driver Inc. scheme face no real consequences, they will keep stealing workers’ wages, depriving governments of tax revenue, and putting poorly trained drivers on our roads.
“The government is now admitting in writing what we’ve been telling it for years: fraudsters have nothing to fear. A cheated driver waits 15 months before an investigator even opens their file, then more than two years for it to be resolved. In the meantime, the company shuts down and disappears with the money. Ottawa must do better, and fast,” said François Laporte, President of Teamsters Canada.
The La Presse investigation also reveals that the federal team dedicated to employee misclassification has only 19 investigators to monitor an industry of 8,000 employers and 260,000 workers, and that its funding expires in 2028. Since 2021, a mere 51 monetary penalties have been imposed, ranging from $1,000 to $12,000, and several remain simply unpaid.
“Nineteen inspectors for the whole country, and fines that amount to a fraction of the profits generated by the scheme and that aren’t even collected: that’s not deterrence, that’s a cost of doing business. And let’s remember, it’s not the drivers who should be punished, it’s the companies that force them to incorporate,” added Jean Chartrand, Road Transportation Advisor at Teamsters Canada.
To put a definitive end to this scourge, we are urging governments to:
- Target the companies that impose misclassification, with truly dissuasive fines and liability extending to clients who look the other way;
- Hire more inspectors and give them the legal powers needed to investigate, sanction, and enforce the law on the ground;
- Systematize data sharing between federal agencies, including the CRA and ESDC, and their provincial counterparts, such as revenue authorities, workers’ compensation boards, and vehicle licensing bodies, to identify offending companies across the country;
- Bar companies found guilty of misclassification from public contracts and publish a registry of offenders;
- Protect drivers who speak out and support, without penalty, those who want to leave this abusive model and regain employee status.
The union is further calling on the federal government to make the inspection team’s funding permanent and increase it before it expires in 2028, to give the Labour Program real collection powers, and on the parliamentary committee to finally table its report on Driver Inc., which victims’ families are still waiting for.
Learn more about the Driver Inc. scheme
About Teamsters Canada
Teamsters Canada represents nearly 130,000 workers across the country, including in the freight transportation industry. The union is affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
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Marc-André Gauthier
Director of Communications, Teamsters Canada
Cell: 514-206-0492 | [email protected]
