A man from Laval along with another from Saint-Eustache who together ran an Ontario truck-driving school found to be fraudulent have received conditional confinement sentences of two years less a day to be served in the community.
Ontario Superior Court Judge Pierre Roger passed sentencing on Gurvinder Singh, age 69, of Laval and Gurpreet Singh, age 37, of Saint-Eustache who were convicted of one count each of fraud over $5,000 and uttering a forged document.
According to evidence presented during the five-week trial, between January 2019 and May 2021 the two used the services of a Punjabi language interpreter who provided answers to truck driving students for questions they needed to answer to obtain on Ontario Ministry of Transportation Commercial Truck Driver Training Standard Class A permit.
In 2017, the Ontario government made entry-level training mandatory in order to obtain a Class A permit, which is necessary to drive commercial trucks in the province.
The two men were found to be operating a truck driving school that was not registered as a private career college and was not authorized to offer Ontario’s Mandatory Entry Level Training (MELT) program for truckers.
While the students were charged fees ($4,000-$5,000) which were slightly lower than at accredited institutions, they received only basic truck driver training, according to the judge’s decision.
Evidence introduced during the trial indicated that the accused circumvented the normal accreditation process by gaining unlawful access to an Ontario Ministry of Transportation database in order to falsify records that their students had completed the MELT program.
In his decision, the judge noted that the students were “tricked and deceived” by the two men “into paying for substandard truck driver training.”
Earlier this year, truck driver Jagmeet Grewal, who drove the truck that rammed a line of cars at the intersection of autoroutes 15 and 440 in Laval in August 2019, killing four people and injuring many others, was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.
Earlier this week, Quebec Liberal MNA for Nelligan Monsef Derraji, who is the official opposition critic for transportation in the National Assembly, took issue with the CAQ government’s dismissal of a nearly 3,000 signature petition calling for stronger enforcement measures to put an end to the presence of illegal truck drivers on Quebec’s roads.
“While the federal government has just announced a $77 million investment to fight the loophole enabling illegal drivers, CAQ members refused to address the issue this morning in the National Assembly,” Derraji said in a statement issued on November 4.
