Feds must stop stalling on national trucking database

Yet another company related to Conquer Transport — the trucking company linked to a fatal collision here in Brandon last May — has been shut down, according to the Manitoba government.

But the fact that Manitoba only did so after receiving a tip from another province proves that a national safety database is urgently required.

As first reported by The Globe and Mail, a Winnipeg-based carrier named 7Star used a phone number that also appears on corporate records for Conquer Transport. The Globe made the discovery after obtaining Manitoba transport records under freedom-of-information laws.

When the national newspaper went to the province asking whether 7Star was related, the Manitoba government confirmed the information and told the reporter that the province had recently cancelled 7Star’s safety fitness certificate.

The timeline of the operators behind this tragedy reads like an instruction manual on how to game the Canadian transportation system.

Manitoba pulled the safety certificate of Conquer Transport Inc. in late 2021 after finding it non-compliant with highway safety laws and trucking regulations. Yet the company continued operating in Manitoba after obtaining an Alberta safety certificate and vehicle registrations. It also changed its name to Conquer Transportation Inc. in the process.

Nearly five years after Manitoba shut it down, a truck registered to the Alberta company allegedly ran a stop sign near Brandon on May 27 of this year and struck an SUV, killing 49-year-old Xiaoyun Zhang, who had the right of way.

Brijpal Panwar, who was 35 at the time, is charged with dangerous driving causing death.

Shortly after the collision, the Alberta government shut the company down after its own investigators found numerous safety violations, including problems with driver hours, vehicle maintenance and inspections, and the company’s safety program.

Yet even after Alberta finally pulled Conquer’s plates over severe maintenance and compliance failures, 7Star Ltd. — an affiliate company — was still allowed to quietly operate out of a residential neighbourhood in Winnipeg.

Thankfully, the province appears to have acted quickly when it learned of the connection. But the fact that a trucking company linked to a banned, high-risk operator was only caught because of a tip from another province exposes a gaping, dangerous hole in how Canada regulates highway safety.

How did Manitoba finally catch them? Not through a routine digital audit. Not through a cross-provincial red flag. They caught them because someone in another province reached out and gave them a tip.

While it is fortunate that this specific tip was investigated and verified, “governance by whistleblower” is not a substitute for real public safety infrastructure. A system that relies on provincial enforcement officers accidentally stumbling across a connection, or waiting for a well-meaning industry insider to blow the whistle, is a system that actively invites tragedy.

As Aaron Dolyniuk of the Manitoba Trucking Association pointed out to the CBC, the current reality begs a chilling question: What are regulators not seeing? How many other “chameleon carriers” are operating right now because no one has called in a tip about them yet?

Under Canada’s current fragmented framework, some provinces are still tracking commercial carriers on “rudimentary” database systems that don’t speak to one another.

Enforcement officers do conduct roadside audits and safety ratings. But when a company shuffles its corporate directors, registers a new numbered corporation or shifts its fleet across provincial lines, our regulators are effectively left blind.

Trucking is inherently interprovincial. A truck that is deemed too dangerous to operate on an Alberta highway poses the exact same threat when it crosses into Manitoba. Treating these jurisdictions as isolated silos is an administrative failure with a human body count.

Manitoba Transportation Minister Lisa Naylor has rightly pressed the federal government for action, but the federal response must move beyond mere talk. Federal Transport Minister Steven MacKinnon needs to swiftly mandate a centralized, real-time national safety database.

This shouldn’t be a complex hurdle in 2026. A unified national database must automatically track vehicle identification numbers, commercial safety ratings, and the actual names of the directors and owners behind these corporations. The moment a carrier is flagged or shut down in Calgary, a digital red flag should instantly lock down their operations in Winnipeg, Toronto and Halifax.

We have the technology to track a retail package across the globe in real-time. There is no good excuse why we cannot track a multi-ton commercial vehicle linked to a history of severe safety violations. Bringing that technology to our highways comes down to the will of MacKinnon to make it happen — that, and the co-operation of Canada’s provincial governments.

The closure of 7Star Ltd. shouldn’t reassure us. It should remind us that until Canada replaces the current provincial patchwork with a rigorous national tracking system, the safety of our highways may come down to a phone call.

And a little luck.