Canada is Scrambling to Develop an ELD Standard
Despite an early start on developing an Electronic Logging Device standard, Canadian regulators are now scrambling to get something in place by the time the U.S. rule takes effect in December 2017.
The devices have been on Canada’s regulatory radar since late 2007, and work began in earnest on a technical performance-based standard for e-logging devices in 2010 to prepare for an anticipated Canadian mandate.
The first draft was completed in 2013 and intended to roughly align with the first ELD final rule published by the U.S. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) in 2010. That rule was vacated by the courts in August 2011 on grounds that it did not do enough to prevent driver coercion by carriers. It was back to the drawing board, and Canada decided to wait.
“We knew the U.S. was struggling to punch out its final rule, so we felt is best to wait and see what the U.S. final rule looked like before moving forward with our standard,” says Reg Wightman, chairman of the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators’ Compliance and Regulatory Affairs Committee and a member of the ELD Working Group that developed Canada’s first draft standard. “The working group believes that was a justifiable position.”
Canadian regulators got their first look at the U.S. final rule at the same time everyone else did — when it was published in December 2015.
“We were a little frustrated that the U.S. did not involve Canada in the consultative process,” Wightman says. “I don’t know why it had to be that way. We would have preferred to have been consulted rather than have the U.S. rule just land on our desk. And I think most of [the Compliance and Regulatory Affairs committee] felt that frustration. Having said that, FMCSA is now bending over backward to help us resolve …Read the rest of this story
