Kelowna

The removal of a license for a commercial driving school has been met with applause from the B.C. Teamsters Union.

President of BCTU, Don McGill, says he strongly agrees with the recent decision by ICBC to remove the license held by a driving school in Surrey.

“The owner of the driving school has had two driving schools in Surrey. One was called Southwest Driving School, I’m not sure if that was the one which lost it’s license,” says McGill.

He says the issue is falsified information which was leading to inexperienced drivers being given licenses to drive large transport trucks.

“Some of the people licensed were showing false papers to the school which said they had driver’s experience in other countries. They would then go through the school and be qualified to drive trucks in Canada based on their past experience.”

McGill says safety is the first priority for all Teamster members.

“Professional drivers know they need to inspect their trucks every morning, adjust the brakes as necessary, and enter this information on a daily log. Someone who would use falsified letters to get a Class One Driver’s License wouldn’t hesitate for a minute to record false information about safety inspections on their logs.”

McGill says if there is the slightest doubt that a commercial vehicle driving school is compromising safety, ICBC has to pull their licenses and re-check all commercial drivers licenses issued by that school.

“When you take inexperience and a heavy truck out on the highways, you are basically talking about a loaded weapon. That’s how people die.”

He says over 120 licenses issued from the school have been put up for review and he believes at least 20 of them were obtained with falsified papers.