Evaluation summary ‒ Evaluation of Road Safety Programs

Evaluation summary ‒ Evaluation of Road Safety Programs
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Summary outlining the results of the Evaluation of Road Safety Programs.

Evaluation summary ‒ May 2025

Transport Canada’s Road Safety programs are responsible for developing and implementing regulations for motor vehicles, tires, child restraint systems, and booster seats; auditing, inspecting, and testing vehicles, equipment, and companies to ensure compliance with regulations and standards; overseeing and auditing motor vehicle importations, investigating defects and influencing recalls, and supporting provinces and territories in implementing the National Safety Code.

The purpose of this evaluation was to examine the relevance, effectiveness, and efficiency/economy of TC’s Road Safety programs. It focused on the impact of new technologies and changing patterns of transportation, as well as examining the Motor Vehicle Test Centre’s (MVTC) operating model.

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Program information

5 sub-programs

  1. Connected and Automated Vehicle Regulatory Policy
  2. Road Safety and Vehicle Regulations
  3. Motor Vehicle Regulation Enforcement
  4. Road Safety Transfer Payment Program (RSTPP) and the Enhanced Road Safety Transfer Payment Program (ERSTPP)
  5. The MVTC and Motor Vehicle Safety Investigations Laboratory

$15,484,080 ‒ 2024-25 operating budget

Road Safety programs currently rely on a large portion of B-base funding. Specifically, just under half of the total budget for FY 2024-25 was B-base. This funding is not guaranteed in the long-term.

80 FTEs in 2022-23

The Regulations and Oversight & Enforcement functions recorded 38 and 42 FTEs, respectively – a slight decrease from 41 and 43 in the previous fiscal year.

Evaluation methods

  • 52 interviewees
  • 60+ documents
  • 6 case studies

Findings

  1. There is an ongoing need for TC’s road safety programming to ensure the safety of Canadians while keeping pace with a quickly evolving motor vehicle industry.
  2. While the National Collision Database (NCDB) is an essential tool for quantifying and qualifying trends in road safety outcomes over time, challenges with national data collection and timeliness limit its utility.
  3. Road Safety’s Regulations function is struggling to keep pace with the rate of change and innovation in the motor vehicle industry (e.g., Connected & Automated Vehicles, Electric Vehicles, micromobility devices), leading to a backlog of unaddressed regulatory files.
  4. The Enforcement function is also impacted by unaddressed regulatory files and increasingly complex vehicle technologies.
  5. Capacity and resourcing issues are taking away from Road Safety’s ability to complete tasks expeditiously, given the regulatory backlog and the cascading workload impacts on the Oversight and Enforcement team.
  6. The contractor for the MVTC provides a high quality of work at a fair rate but there are limited opportunities to reduce/recover the costs of running the Centre.
  7. There is a continued need for RSTPP funding for provinces and territories to support a consistent approach to commercial vehicle safety.

Recommendation (the Program should):

  1. Assess the potential for collaborating with other Canadian organizations that collect road safety data with a view to improving the NCDB.

Actions (the Program agreed to):

  • Conduct an environmental scan of alternative data sources that could inform regulatory research and development (end of FY 2025-26)
  • Conduct feasibility/proof of concept projects to assess viability of data resources for different regulatory needs (end of FY 2027-28)
  • Explore partnerships and/or procurement contracts to support longer term regulatory needs within available resources (end of FY 2028-29)
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