A pair of trucking companies have failed to reverse a decision to revoke a shared licence to transport shipping containers in B.C.
Two affiliated companies, Safeway Trucking Ltd. and Coast Pacific Carrier Inc., which “operate in tandem as a single business,” according to the B.C. Supreme Court, previously shared a licence to operate under the Container Trucking Act.
The B.C. Container Trucking Commissioner cancelled the licence last year
The companies asked the commissioner to reconsider the March 2022 decision, which cited “various alleged violations” of the Container Trucking Act, according to a B.C. Supreme Court decision.
The decision named six violations:
- failing to keep and produce certain records;
- requiring four drivers to become independent operators of trucks;
- requiring four drivers to take an ownership interest in equipment the company had an ownership interest in;
- underpaying seven drivers a combined $141,380;
- failing to comply with a 2018 order to pay a driver a sum of money; and
- retaliating against a complainant.
The retaliation allegedly involved “ceasing to provide or threatening to cease to provide work, cancelling or threatening to cancel their truck insurance and sending them threatening letters,” according to the court decision penned by Justice Warren Milman.
The issue arose in June 2020, when four drivers filed confidential complaints.
The commissioner dismissed a request for reconsideration last May before the company applied for a judicial review in June. The judge ordered a stay of the licence cancellation the following month until the matter could be decided.
The companies only raised one issue with the commissioner’s decision for judicial review: that the commissioner’s decision came more than six months after he became aware of the issues. That six-month timer began ticking on Aug. 12, 2021, when the commissioner issued a proposed decision after interviewing the complainants and auditing the companies.
Six months and 21 days had lapsed by the March 8, 2022, decision.
But in that time, the commissioner had extended the companies’ seven-day timeline to respond to the proposed decision by 25 days, asked to be interviewed by the commissioner twice and asked to submit extra evidence.
Whether the decision failed to meet the deadline, Milman noted, is only the beginning of the legal analysis – not the end.
While a deadline could be viewed as promoting “administrative diligence … for the benefit of licensees,” as the companies suggested, Milman said it could also be viewed as a way to ensure expedient resolution for the workers to protect drivers and mitigate “renewed labour unrest.”
“That goal too would be undermined if the interpretation urged by the petitioners were to prevail,” Milman wrote in dismissing the companies’ petition.
“The 21-day delay was not a lengthy one. It caused no prejudice to the petitioners. There is no suggestion of bad faith. On the contrary, the delay can be explained, at least in part, by the extension given to the petitioners for the delivery of their responding submissions and evidence after their own statutory deadline had expired.”
