Manitoba Public Insurance hits brakes on truck-driver training program

Some Manitobans who hopeto become truck drivers may be leftsitting on the side of the road, as Manitoba Public Insurance is hitting the brakes on a program that was meant to help alleviate a shortage of transport truck drivers in the province.

The Entry Level Professional Truck Driver Training Program, administered through the Manitoba Trucking Association, provided full tuition fundingfor those who qualified for training programs in the province.

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Tammy Pollock lives in Brandon and was hoping to take advantage of the program to pay for the approximately$8,400 in tuition costs for training she hoped would help advance her career in the transport industry.

She submitted her paperwork late last week. She said when she called on Monday to see how long it took for applications to be reviewed, she was told the program is being discontinuedand she won't be receiving any funding.

"It blew me away. I was completely shocked," she said. "I didn't know what to say."

Pollock already works in the industry, driving pilot trucks forlarger transport trucks. A slowdown in that line of work drove her desireto get behind the wheel of the big trucks herself.

She's now not sure where she'll get the $8,400 she needs for the six-week training many companies require for potential drivers.

"That's just tuition," Pollock said. "That's just not something that a lot of people have readily available."

Manitoba Public Insurance confirmed Wednesday that the program is being phased out after nearly a decade. It first beganin 2008 as a pilot project.

An MPI spokesperson said new applications to the program will stop being accepted on June 30, 2017.

A spokesperson with theManitoba Trucking Association said they couldn't comment until discussing the matter with MPI.

Driver shortage across Canada

The funding cut comes at a time when the trucking industry is having anincreasingly hard time finding new drivers. A study commissioned last year bythe Canadian Trucking Allianceestimated that the industry could be short as many as 48,000 drivers by 2024.

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Companies have turned to workers from outside Canada to help fill the immediate need. In 2014, Manitoba-based Arnold Brothers Transport Ltd. recruited drivers from Jamaica.

It wasthose good job prospects that attracted Pollock to the idea of becoming a driver.

"There's such a high demand in the trucking industry right now," she said. "It's a good industry to get into just because of the fact that there's always a job somewhere."

Pollock said she is now trying to find other avenues of funding through other organizations that offer education funding, like Employment Manitoba, but so far hasn't had any luck.

She isn't sure what she'll do if she can't pull together the funds, through another program or a personal loan.

"At that point, I'm probably going to hit a wall," Pollock said. "At this point, I'm still a little bit taken aback."

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