DRIVEN BY WAIT TIMES
A driving school car makes its way through downtown Thursday after Transportation Minister Ric Mciver announced the province is privatizing road tests for Class 4, 5 and 6 licences. Government staff will continue to conduct tests for commercial licences.
The UCP government is privatizing driving exams for Class 4, 5, and 6 licences, which it says will give Albertans quicker access to more road tests across the province.
The decision, announced Thursday by Transportation Minister Ric Mciver, reverses a move by the former NDP government that took effect March 2019 and made examiners government employees, and comes at a time when wouldbe drivers are facing months-long waits for road tests following the COVID-19 shutdown.
Starting Dec. 1, Albertans will be able to book passenger vehicle road tests directly with local registries or through a new online system. Tests will begin being offered Jan. 5.
The vast majority — 85 per cent — of requested tests will now be conducted by private driver examiners through private registry agents.
Government driver examiners will continue to conduct Class 1 to 3 commercial truck and bus road tests. The government estimates the move will save up to $12.1 million per year and mean more driver examiners will be available to conduct road tests outside of normal government hours.
“One of my first tasks when I became transportation minister in 2019 was to find a solution to a problem that affected so many Albertans,” he said. “Some people were losing employment opportunities and others struggled to get to critical appointments or school.”
Mciver criticized the NDP'S decision to change the examiner system, claiming that move reduced the number of examiners in the province to 77 — about half of what was needed and caused lengthy wait times. He also acknowledged that the decision to close tests from March 19 to June 30 to slow the spread of COVID-19 caused the wait-list to shoot up again.
Would-be drivers have told Postmedia about waiting months just to be able to book a road test online, despite trying every day at all hours of the day.
Mciver did not say how long the wait times are now. He hopes to have the problem under control by the first quarter of next year.
The examiners who run the Class 4, 5, and 6 tests will be laid off but Mciver hopes they will apply for
jobs under the new system.
In a statement, NDP transportation critic Rod Loyola denied that the number of examiners was down across the province when the NDP was in power, insisting fulltime equivalent capacity was up.
“The UCP government failed to plan appropriately when they shut down testing due to COVID-19, and now their backlog is out of control,” he said.
Loyola said the old plan under the UCP offered no protections against examiners repeatedly failing new drivers in order to bill them for several tests.
Mciver said the government will be making improvements to increase oversight of how road tests are conducted through electronic monitoring of each road test and other controls.