Transportation ministers signed a 14-measure memorandum to align trucking rules
In June 2026, federal, provincial and territorial ministers formalized the interprovincial trucking agreement, including plans for a national regulations hub.
In June 2026, the Council of Ministers Responsible for Transportation and Highway Safety announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on Interprovincial Trucking, aimed at reducing trade barriers and lining up trucking rules across Canada.
The memorandum covers 14 measures. Highlights listed by the council included:
- Finishing the rollout of pan-Canadian mandatory entry-level training (MELT) for commercial truck drivers.
- Clarifying and improving permit application processes for oversize and overweight vehicles.
- Putting in place new minimum standards to align signage, lighting and flag requirements for oversize vehicles and escort vehicles.
- Further aligning training requirements for long combination vehicles.
- Working toward greater harmonization of commercial trucking safety standards.
- Building a web-based Canadian Trucking Regulations Hub as a single source of regulatory information to help with route planning.
How it came together
The council said work on the memorandum began in September 2024, when the Committee on Internal Trade launched a project to reduce trucking barriers. Ministers agreed in Québec City in February 2025 to work toward concluding it, and a "Trucking Hackathon" in Toronto in July 2025 brought governments and industry groups, including the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA), together to speed things up.
The council also said it would keep working on labour, tax and safety issues tied to the Driver Inc. model, which ministers had named an ongoing priority at their February 2026 meeting in Vancouver.
Industry reaction
The CTA said the measures largely reflected recommendations the industry had pushed for in recent years. Geoff Wood, the alliance's senior vice-president of policy, said carriers operating across provincial and territorial lines would benefit from more aligned and predictable rules. The CTA called the memorandum an important milestone but said the focus now had to move to implementation.