BC Gov News

Duncan MacPhail:

Duncan MacPhail has 35 years of experience in labour and employment law in British Columbia.  He is experienced in federal and provincial tribunals, arbitration and labour boards and in British Columbia courts. He is familiar with a wide variety of industries including transportation, municipal government, retail food, manufacturing, health care, forestry, education, airport security and construction. He has been recognized in Best Lawyers, Labour and Employment and is listed in Who’s Who Legal as a leading employment and labour lawyer.

Michael Crawford:

Michael Crawford has 10 years of transportation policy experience in B.C. and internationally. Since the last work stoppage at Port Metro Vancouver by container truckers in 2014, Crawford has focused on Lower Mainland container trucking issues by assisting in drafting the Container Trucking Act (2014) and in establishing the Office of the Container Trucking Commissioner. Through his extensive work on this file, Crawford has gained in-depth knowledge of the sector, the legislation, the rate structure and the audit process of the commissioner’s office. He has also been working towards resolving issues in the sector with key stakeholders including members of the Industry Advisory Committee, the BC Trucking Association and Port Metro Vancouver.

Office of the Container Trucking Commissioner:

The establishment of an independent, B.C. Container Trucking Commissioner is a key component of the province’s Container Trucking legislation. The commissioner is responsible for providing oversight of Metro Vancouver’s drayage industry and for resolving issues within the sector. The commissioner has established an Industry Advisory Committee and meets with this committee regularly to hear any concerns within the industry. The commissioner has broad powers to ensure compliance with the regulatory regime including:

• Conducting audits and investigations;
• Ordering a trucking company to comply with any provision of the legislation or with the licence obligations;
• Imposing penalties ranging from suspending a licence and imposing administrative fines to cancelling a licence;

The commissioner’s office regularly posts memos relevant to the industry. Decisions following the findings of an audit and Orders to Pay are on its website. These can be viewed in detail at http://bc-ctc.ca/news/

On Oct. 14, 2015, Corinn Bell was appointed acting commissioner and Vince Ready appointed acting deputy commissioner for the Container Trucking Commissioner Office. Over the past five months, they have taken the following steps to create a better work environment for participants in the Metro Vancouver container trucking industry.

One of their first duties was to oversee the audit function and ensure that decisions were made on rate enforcement, including retroactivity. The audit function revealed a number of companies had not been paying the regulated rates to their drivers. Bell and Ready have web-posted their decisions and orders to comply with respect to these audits and they can be viewed in detail at:

http://bc-ctc.ca/decisions/

http://bc-ctc.ca/orders/

Bell and Ready have also met with key players in the industry, including several of the organizations representing license holders, labour and stakeholders from the sector to hear about issues important to the industry. The Industry Advisory Committee has met once monthly between November 2015 and January 2016 and detailed meeting summaries are posted to the commissioner’s website: http://bc-ctc.ca/iac/.

Bell and Ready have also web-posted 13 industry memos to the container trucking commissioner’s website since October 2015. These memos provide industry participants with information regarding the regulated rates and retroactivity, licensing and the audit process. These memos can be viewed at: http://bc-ctc.ca/industry-memos/

The Province is grateful to acting commissioner Corinn Bell and acting deputy commissioner Vince Ready for their hard work these past few months, laying the groundwork in the container trucking industry to ensure the law is being followed and truckers are being paid fairly for their work.