A tragic incident in Florida in August, where a foreign truck driver caused the deaths of three people due to a reckless U-turn, has sparked significant action from U.S. officials. The driver, Harjinder Singh, was charged with three counts of vehicular homicide and three counts of manslaughter shortly after the accident. In response to the increasing safety concerns associated with commercial truckers, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a halt to the issuance of all work visas for commercial truck drivers just a week later. This decision reflects a broader trend of safety measures being implemented in the U.S. trucking industry.

In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that strengthened English-language requirements for truck drivers. While English proficiency had been a requirement, it was not consistently enforced. The new measures mandate that drivers who cannot understand English will be placed out of service. The transportation department has indicated that it will withdraw funding from states that fail to comply with these regulations. This proactive approach contrasts sharply with the response in Canada following a similar tragedy in 2018, when a truck driver caused the deaths of 16 members of the Humboldt Broncos Junior A hockey team in Saskatchewan.

The driver, Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, ran a stop sign while driving at high speed. Although the incident led to some improvements in training requirements, such as the introduction of Mandatory Entry Level Training (MELT) in several jurisdictions, critics argue that the response has been insufficient. Sidhu had only completed a week of training and two weeks of supervised driving before the crash. While Saskatchewan has made some safety upgrades to the intersection involved, and in 2021 banned non-resident drivers from using out-of-country licenses, the overall response has been seen as lacking.

The Humboldt tragedy is not an isolated case; it is part of a troubling pattern of road incidents involving foreign drivers in Canada. However, there is a lack of comprehensive data to analyze the extent of the issue. Provinces like Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan do not track safety incidents by driver nationality, making it difficult to determine if non-citizen drivers are disproportionately involved in accidents. Ontario has not provided clarity on whether it tracks driver nationality, suggesting that inquiries be made through freedom-of-information requests.

While it is known that both Canadian-born and non-citizen truck drivers can be involved in fatal collisions, the statistics needed to draw definitive conclusions about the safety records of foreign drivers are not readily available. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there are numerous incidents involving drivers of unknown origin, but without systematic tracking, the true scope of the problem remains unclear. In 2016, it was reported that drivers from the Indian subcontinent made up one-fifth of Canada’s truckers, with immigrants accounting for one-third of the total. Concerns have also been raised about potential abuses within the trucking industry regarding training and licensing practices.