Have you been in one of those privatized DriveTest centers lately? I took my youngest there this year and they are a total joke.
One the left-right light test, several people got this totally wrong, but the girl at the desk kept running it over and over and over until they finally passed. They asked them several questions like "Did you have a drivers license in your country?" to which they answered "Yes" but that all their records had been lost. The girl said no problem and that she would mark them as licensed. Literally anything they said, with absolutely no records or other backup, was taken as gospel by the DriveTest reps.
Then these same people went into the written test and immediately fired up their phones and while pointing at questions on the screen, they started talking to someone on the other line, and obviously cheating like rats. The lady CSR kept telling them (in French and English) that no phones were allowed, but these people just waved at her and kept on cheating and after a few tries she just ignored them and went back to work. In another area there were some hard-cases who apparently had absolutely no clue and one of the DriveTest reps was filling out the answers for them - no joke.
Right after that an older white French guy walked in with an existing license and needed to make address adjustments to it and apply for reinstatement of his large truck license (Class 3 I think). He had all the paperwork, but the lady gave his a seriously hard time and he had to keep coming back over and over, and she questioned him like the FBI would a serial killer. He was getting pretty irritated, especially as all the "new Canadians" were passing with ease, while getting most questions wrong and apparently couldn't connect their right/left eye to their right/left hand. I'd swear that half of them were legally blind.
And you wonder why driving in Canada has gotten so much worse lately - it's obvious the Canadian stakeholders (large companies/corporations) need these newcomers to get licenses as fast and as easily as possible to start buying cars and spending money - that's the only reason the government brought them here - more warm bodies with wallets to feed Bell, Rogers, Galen and the Big Banks. If you're already a Canadian with a license, then you're in a lower class, and get the whip not the carrot, like everyone did back in the day when getting a drivers license was a serious thing.
If you're a newcomer to Canada you get a free pass in a lot of areas, just like in our two-tiered justice system, where non-citizens rarely get convicted of anything, as it would "harm their ability to become Canadian citizens" - isn't that kind of the point? Just recently a non-citizen got caught in a pedophile sting, but was exonerated by a judge because "it would harm his ability to gain employment in Canada". Huh? I hope he doesn't get hired at a childcare center with his 'spotless record'.
The PCs are introducing a bill to end this two-tiered justice system, but I expect the Liberals to fight tooth & nail to maintain the status quo and allow non-citizens to be immune to prosecution.
