OTTAWA — The latest development in the nearly five-year progression toward nationally uniform motor carrier safety ratings is that no system will be introduced until some time in 1999.

At a meeting in Ottawa last week, the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators committee on compliance and regulatory affairs decided it needed more time to establish a safety ratings program than a Jan. 1, 1999, deadline set last year allowed.

The group, chaired by Derek Sweet, director, road safety programs, at Transport Canada, wants to finalize and implement National Safety Code standards 14 and 15, which outline safety ratings and facility audit principles.

A carrier’s overall performance would be rated satisfactory, conditional, satisfactory/unaudited, or unsatisfactory based primarily on its record of collisions, out-of-service violations, and driver-related infractions.

With less than two months to go, the Jan. 1 deadline was unrealistic, Sweet conceded.

Foremost on the committee’s agenda is fine-tuning provincial systems for analyzing carrier profile data. Provincial transport regulators and industry leaders are scheduled to meet Nov. 27-29 in Winnipeg to test ratings methodologies for each jurisdiction.

“We’ve got 28 sets of ‘live’ carrier data, and we’re going to run them through all the provincial algorithms to make sure every system reaches a consistent conclusion at the end,” said Sweet.

“A satisfactory carrier in one province has to be satisfactory in the rest. If the algorithms can’t be tweaked in Winnipeg, then at least the jurisdictions can go home and know what has to be done. It’s a very important meeting.”

Safety ratings are expected to be included in proposed amendments to the federal Motor Vehicle Transportation Act requiring carriers to obtain a safety fitness certificate and safety rating in order to operate extra-provincially. Later this month, Transport Canada officials will seek approval from Cabinet to begin drafting the amendments, Sweet said.

This year, the CCMTA committee resolved several issues that weighed on its progress. It abandoned the pursuit of mandatory audits, agreeing instead on a more targeted approach. And it set collision thresholds that will trigger an audit.

It also agreed to look at how to reward carriers for good performance.

Canadian Trucking Alliance chief executive officer David Bradley, who on Nov. 6 said the CTA was threatening to withdraw support for the committee’s safety ratings plan because the Jan. 1. implementation deadline would have required compromises to national consistency, was pleased that the deadline was delayed.

“The date of Jan. 1, 1999, for an introduction was simply not in the cards,” he said. “So now we’re able to sit down with [the committee] and start working on this stuff again, as opposed to the governments sitting down behind closed doors and cooking up something that was ineffective and inconsistent for the sake of an unrealistic deadline. I think we’ve achieved the goal for the time being.”