More fines for unlawful school bus certificates
A third case involving illegal school bus inspection certificates wrapped up in provincial court in St. John’s Tuesday morning, with the number of charges compressed from about 100 to just two.
Island Bus Service of Portugal Cove-st. Phillips, its owner Paul Cummings and mechanic Brian Kent had each been facing charges under the province’s Highway Traffic Act of issuing and displaying vehicle inspection certificates without proper inspections having been completed. When the case was called Tuesday, the charges against the bus company were withdrawn, while Cummings and Kent made a plea deal, each entering a guilty plea to a single amended charge related to five buses.
Cummings, who owns the bus company as well as the Bell Island garage where the inspections were carried out, was fined $2,400. Kent, who was tasked with performing the inspections, was fined $1,200. The garage is banned from performing vehicle inspections for one year under provincial legislation.
A number of Island Bus Service buses were pulled off the road in October 2016 after an incident involving one of them resulted in the Newfoundland and Labrador English School District ordering an inspection of the entire fleet. Issues were found with 22 of the vehicles, which Kent had inspected just eight weeks previously. Those issues included leaky break lines, a fuel leak and emergency door problems, and a number of the buses had mileage that was between 4,000 and 10,000 kilometres less than what was reported on their previous inspection documents.
The school board subsequently terminated the bus company’s contracts.
Other instances
A month ago, J.J. Services operator Janet Jones pleaded guilty to six counts of unlawfully issuing inspection certificates for school buses. Her business was responsible for conducting school bus inspections for Kelloway Investments Ltd., which is owned by her brother and had a bus contract with the Newfoundland and Labrador English School District. When the school district undertook a blitz of surprise bus inspections of its own in January of last year, it found problems with 58 Kelloway buses that had been issued certificates by J.J. Services a month earlier. The court heard that the mechanic’s practice was to sign the certificates before the work was done, then rely on other mechanics to do the repairs and fill out the rest of the documents. Jones was fined $1,200 for each of six buses. The mechanic, Gerald Butt, was also charged and convicted. Charges against Kelloway Investments were withdrawn.
In April, Peter Roche of Roche’s Automotive Services pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of forging 44 vehicle inspection certificates as well as to a Highway Traffic Act charge of issuing certificates without a proper inspection. Roche, as chief mechanic of the business, had signed the certificates and confirmed he had taken each of the buses on a road test as required. Staff with the province’s Motor Registration Division realized Roche did not have a valid licence at the time, having been subject to a ban for impaired driving, and contacted police. Roche was sentenced to two months of house arrest and fined a total of $12,440.