Trucking company involved in deadly Manitoba crash among 20 carriers 'eliminated' in Alberta

Trucking company involved in deadly Manitoba crash among 20 carriers 'eliminated' in Alberta

Conquer Transportation started operating in Alberta after losing safety certification in Manitoba

The company whose truck was in a fatal crash in Brandon, Man., in May — after it had its safety permit pulled in Manitoba — now can't operate from Alberta, the province said Thursday.

Conquer Transportation is one of the 20 unsafe carriers "eliminated" in Alberta since October, Alberta Transportation Minister Devin Dreeshen said Thursday.

"We are trying to clean up the industry," Dreeshen told CBC. "It's the bad actors that are giving the industry a black eye."

Police say a Conquer truck driver went through a stop sign at a Brandon intersection and hit an SUV on May 27, killing a 49-year-old woman in the Manitoba city 200 kilometres west of Winnipeg.

Brijpal Panwar is charged with dangerous driving causing death after Xiaoyun Zhang died in the crash near Brandon Packers, her workplace.

Her son Jay has described her as "just a really hard-working woman and a really powerful person."

Conquer Transportation registered in Alberta in 2022 after Conquer Transport — owned by the same family and using the same trucks — had its safety permit pulled in Manitoba in 2021 for "deficiencies in safe operation and non-compliance," a Manitoba government spokesperson previously said.

Family wrestles with heartbreak after Brandon woman, 49, killed in May crash with semi

In April, weeks before the fatal crash in Manitoba, the company was assessed as among the highest-risk transportation companies based in Alberta.

That province downgraded the trucking company's safety fitness rating to "unsatisfactory" in June, "effectively shutting down its operations immediately," Dreeshen said in a statement Thursday.

The 20 trucking companies that are no longer permitted to operate in Alberta included 13 "chameleon carriers," the statement said, referring to companies that start operating from another jurisdiction when they're forced to shut down, like Conquer.

The Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators — a joint provincial, territorial and federal organization that regulates the industry — is working to develop a national database to deal with carriers that exploit gaps in interprovincial data sharing and enforcement, Dreeshen said.

In Alberta, 40 chameleon carriers were prevented from getting safety fitness certificates through document review, he said in his statement.

Alberta has also shut down five "fraudulent" Class 1 trucking schools, the statement said.

Barry Prentice, director of the University of Manitoba's Transport Institute, said the fatal crash in Brandon shows the need for tighter regulation in the industry.

"This is why we need regulations like licensing, not so much to permit someone to operate, but to be able to remove the licence so they can't operate," he said.

Alberta shuts down trucking company involved in fatal Manitoba crash

"They're also important for the good players in the industry because something like this can colour people's opinion of the entire trucking industry unfairly."

Robert Harper, president of the Alberta Motor Transport Association, said he's happy to see more resources devoted to getting bad carriers off the road.

Chameleon carriers are tough to tackle, because not only do provinces need to share information about companies' track records, they need to share information from agencies, such as property registries, Harper said.

Alberta trucking company at centre of fatal Manitoba crash has spotty history, records show

"The company can transfer their assets between provinces and reopen, and that doesn't necessarily mean that that's a bad thing that you're doing, but a lot of bad actors use it," he said.

You also need to track directors, owners, operators and assets such as vehicles, Harper said.

"How do you lock down that chameleon carrier? It's not a simple thing at the moment," he said.

"Why are they registering these assets in Alberta? Were they registered, you know, in a different province? And have they been re-registered or de-registered in Manitoba and moved to Alberta? There hasn't really been a process set up to look at that."

In the case of Conquer, the company's name changed slightly, and the Manitoba director of operations told the CBC in June that he was no longer involved and that his son and daughter-in-law were running the company since he helped them set up in Alberta.

Manitoba Transportation Minister Lisa Naylor said the only way to track the companies is through a national database.

"Just in the last few months, Manitoba has removed the safety fitness certificates of seven different trucking companies, and there's really no way for us to track if they turn around and go open up in Saskatchewan or Alberta," she said.

Manitoba currently doesn't have a way to track chameleon carriers that come to the province from other jurisdictions, Naylor said.

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She said she's glad other jurisdictions are recognizing the problem and hopes to hear about progress on a national database when she meets with ministers from across Canada this fall.

"A national database with a registry across the country would allow every province and territory to know what's happening," Naylor said.

Federal Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon sent a statement saying his government continues to work with provincial and territorial partners to strengthen road safety and that progress depends on provinces fulfilling their responsibilities and enforcing existing laws and regulations.

Lara Schroeder is a copy editor at CBC Manitoba who also reports, teaches copy editing for CBC News and dabbles in radio. She started her career as a newspaper reporter in Manitoba and B.C. Her jobs have included editing at the Toronto Star and the Winnipeg Free Press. She started copy editing for CBC News in 2006 and became CBC Manitoba's first local copy editor in 2015.