Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food

Comité permanent de l'agriculture et de l'agroalimentaire

For immediate release

Ottawa, December 11, 2023 -

On 11 December 2023, the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food presented a report to the House of Commons on the impact recent amendments to the Commercial Vehicle Drivers Hours of Service Regulations are having on commercial truck drivers who transport animals. This is the committee’s sixth substantive report of the first session of the 44th Parliament.

The report, entitled, “Striking a Balance: Electronic Logging Device Requirements Impacting Animal Transportation”, is based on testimony the committee received from 18 witnesses over the course of three meetings it held between 26 October 2023 and 9 November 2023.

Over the course of this study, the committee heard that many in the animal transport sector find the current federal regulatory hours-of-service regime provides them with insufficient flexibility to do their job effectively and safely. These witnesses acknowledge the important role these rules play in combatting driver fatigue and making Canadian roads safer, but asked the federal government for clarity, either in the form of guidance to provincial and territorial enforcement officers or regulatory amendments, to better address the specific challenges their sector faces in its work.

To this end, the report recommends that the Government of Canada work immediately with the Canadian Council of Motor Transportation Administrators to issue guidance to law enforcement officers to clarify that a risk to animal welfare constitutes an emergency under the Commercial Vehicle Drivers Hours of Service Regulations.

In the long term, the report recommends that the Government of Canada consider amending these regulations to provide commercial drivers carrying livestock or insects more flexibility at the beginning and end of their trips and to consider expanding the ELD exemption for agricultural producers, notably beekeepers, who use tractor trailers to transport their own products.

The report also recommends that the federal government work with the livestock industry to make sure that animals remain in good health during long journeys by developing rest areas where they can access food and water, and by encouraging the livestock supply chain to adopt monitoring and traceability systems and innovative technologies that improve ventilation in animal transport trucks.

Finally, to reduce the distances drivers must travel to transport animals and to improve local processing capacity, the report recommends the federal government assist provincially inspected slaughterhouses who wish to transition to federal inspection standards.

The report is available on the committee's web page.