TORONTO – -Ontario will harmonize annual safety inspections with the rest of the provinces with a regulation that transitions current annual safety inspections to the National Safety Code Standard.

A two-year period of educational enforcement will begin in July.

According to the Ontario Trucking Association, three specific amendment were made — safety inspections, motor vehicle inspection stations, and a small reference change to Commercial Motor Vehicle Inspections.

OTA took some credit for modernizing the program, saying it first called for harmonization back in 1997.

"A lot has changed since then — the gap between Ontario‚s regulations and the NSC standard had widened and certain aspects of the NSC standard itself had become out-dated — so we needed to work with MTO to ensure a common sense, modernized approach," David Bradley said in a press release.

OTA established a special sub-committee of its Maintenance Council to help develop its policy.

All stakeholders agreed that while there are some differences between the national standard and the current regulation, all concerns could be addressed through a migration protocol for a smooth transition as well as incentives for those exceeding the national standard and a commitment from MTO to hold everyone to the same standard.

"If you‚re maintaining your equipment now and have adequate preventative maintenance programs in place you should see little or no difference between the new rules and the old one‚s aside from getting used to the format of the national standard," said Bradley.

According to the OTA, the major issues dealt with during the consultation process included:

Inspection times. The new inspections may take an additional five or 10 minutes to complete but would provide more valid vehicle information. In many cases there was no added time because the current inspections undertaken by businesses are already more rigorous that the current national requirements.

Dated technical issues related to transition. There were eight technical issues identified by the sub-committee that are a part of the national standard that are either irrelevant due to changing technology or nonsensical reflecting poor legislative language drafting. MTO has agreed not to reference these sections of the national standard.

Enforcement. The sub-committee identified the need for MTO to adopt a more visible enforcement system within the Motor Vehicle Inspection Station (MVIS) program. MTO has indicated that it will tighten up some of the loopholes in the regulation to ensure the distinction between fleet stations and public stations is not abused.

Incentives. Carriers with a solid safety performance should receive incentives, the sub-committee says, in the form of a reduction in administrative burden associated with the performance of annual inspections. MTO has agreed with OTA to explore such a system.