TORONTO — Commercial trucking licence fees in Ontario are scheduled to go up by a whopping 70 percent in less than two years: first by 30 percent come December 1, 2012 and then by another 40 percent a year later.

What’s more, that increase falls unevenly on truckers, says the Ontario Trucking Association (OTA).

So, the Province should reconsider its plans, the OTA says.  And although the organization’s President David Bradley says truckers are prepared to share the costs of using the transportation system as well as deficit fighting, the burden should be shared evenly across the industry.

The OTA has “proposed various options for the government to consider including phasing the second increase over a longer period (which is how the increase in personal driver’s licence fees is being handled) and that all heavy commercial vehicles be required to pay registration fees.”

Also he said some trucks are treated differently than others. For example,  mobile cranes, vacuum trucks, concrete pumping trucks, street sweepers and water trucks, for example, are exempt from paying any vehicle registration fees.

“These vehicles are trucks too; they use the public infrastructure and are owned and operated by private for-profit entities,” Bradley says. “The idea of user pay is that everyone pays their fair share.”

Adds Bradley: “There is nothing to be done about the December 2012 increase, but there are various ways the government could deal with the 2013 increase.”

In response, Ontario Transportation Minister Bob Chiarelli says he has instructed his staff to look at options and alternatives for a more protracted fee-increase schedule.”

In a letter to the OTA, Chiarelli said the point of these fee increases is to ensure roads and bridges remain in good repair and that the government is simply following the Drummond Commission’s advice. 

“The Drummond Commission recommended the province should be based on full cost recovery, which has not been the case for vehicle and licence fees for many years,” Chiarelli said.