Alberta trucking company at centre of fatal Manitoba crash has spotty history, records show (original) (raw)

A trucking company at the centre of a deadly Brandon, Man., crash has a spotty record in Alberta, where it's been registered since having its safety permit pulled in Manitoba over four years ago.

Conquer Transportation Inc. was assessed as among the highest-risk transportation companies based in Alberta as of April, only weeks before one of its drivers allegedly blew a stop sign and hit an SUV in Brandon, killing a 49-year-old woman, the Alberta carrier profile of the company shows.

"It's pretty bad," Robert Harper, president of the Alberta Motor Transport Association, said about the company's risk rating.

"Once the investigation for Manitoba comes in, I'm sure it will hit the worst."

The Brandon death on May 27 highlights enforcement gaps in the system involving so-called "chameleon" carriers — companies that lose their permits in one jurisdiction only to pop up in another under a different name, says Marc Cadieux, a board member with the Canadian Trucking Alliance.

"These practices of chameleon companies [are] putting at stake lives of our road users," said Cadieux, who is also CEO of the Quebec Trucking Association.

"They just switch around, open another corporation in a province and bring back the same approach — neglecting their maintenance, having not well-trained drivers. And the issue, as it happened in Brandon, is one that we commonly know throughout Canada."

Manitoba Transportation Minister Lisa Naylor says the driver, charged with dangerous driving causing death, worked for Conquer Transportation Inc. in Alberta, formerly Conquer Transport Inc. in Manitoba.

She's calling on the federal transportation minister to "take action against the bad actors in the trucking industry" and create a national database to "flag any issues related to safety, particularly when a company has had their certification rescinded or a history of repeat bad behaviour," Naylor said in a statement to CBC News.

Conquer Transport lost its Manitoba safety certification in 2021 "for ongoing deficiencies in safe operation and non-compliance," a government spokesperson said.

At that time, Conquer had racked up 30 convictions since 2018 across five provinces, government documents state.

Inspection 'headaches'

Paramjit Dhaliwal, listed as the director of operations in Manitoba, told CBC News on Thursday he hasn't been involved in the business since 2021, at which time he says he had about nine trucks.

Dhaliwal said he was "fed up" from the "headaches" associated with inspections.

"Too much inspection, inspection, inspection. They said, 'No, you lose the safety rating,'" he said.

Dhaliwal said his son and daughter-in-law have run Conquer's operations in Alberta since he helped them set things up there in 2022.

CBC News emailed several accounts associated with the company but did not hear back.

Alberta Transportation declined to say whether that government is considering pulling Conquer's permits in that province after the fatal Manitoba crash.

A spokesperson said "if it is confirmed that an Alberta-based carrier was involved," the province would "take decisive action without hesitation," the department said in a statement.

Semi's drive though a highway intersection.

The intersection where the Brandon crash happened. (Chelsea Kemp/CBC)

The spokesperson said Alberta Transportation is working with Manitoba's motor carrier enforcement unit and the Brandon Police Service.

A Manitoba government spokesperson said Friday that Manitoba has "regularly" been in contact with its Alberta counterpart since learning Conquer resurfaced under a slightly different name in that province in 2022.

Checkered Manitoba record

Manitoba Infrastructure records show how a series of inspection issues led the province to downgrade Conquer's safety rating before it was stripped entirely.

The Manitoba incarnation of the company failed two inspections, three National Safety Code facility audits and was put out of service 10 times between 2017 and when it had its certification pulled, provincial documents state.

While still registered in Manitoba, Conquer drivers and their vehicles were placed out of service three times in Alberta, the documents state. One vehicle failed an inspection, another was placed out of service in Saskatchewan, and one driver was put out of service after an inspection in Ontario.

The company started getting warning letters from Manitoba inspectors almost immediately after it got up and running.

Several months after starting operations in late 2017, Manitoba Infrastructure sent its first so-called intervention letters to warn that performance needed to be reviewed. Such a notice is triggered when performance hits 40-65 per cent.

By 2021, the company safety grade had "degraded significantly" and was more than five times over that, with a performance score of 275 per cent. It failed its final of three audits and lost its Manitoba certification that fall.

Conquer re-emerges in Alberta

Conquer Transport Inc. then emerged as Conquer Transportation Inc. in Alberta in 2022.

The Alberta government's carrier profile for Conquer details several infractions in the ensuing years, including six convictions across three provinces.

Three of those convictions, between 2023 and 2025, involved Conquer vehicles operating in Manitoba that were found to be in violation of maintenance or equipment standards, as well as one case where they reportedly kept "two logs or false logs."

In 2025, Conquer vehicles were put out of service at least four times — three of which were in Manitoba — for failing inspections, Alberta records show.

Provinces also assess safety or risk profile ratings for companies. In Alberta, the industry standard risk profile is in the 0.35 range, government documents state.

On a scale from one to over four, Alberta assessed Conquer's risk profile as 3.9 as of April, the documents state.

That score put Conquer among the 225 transportation companies with the highest risk profile in Alberta, out of more than 18,000 companies registered in the province, documents show.

That means Conquer's rating is "worse" than the vast majority of companies, Harper said, adding he assumes Alberta will pull its certification once the investigation into the Brandon fatal collision ends.

Bad actors, bad apples

Harper acknowledged there is a long-standing issue with companies re-registering after they lose certification in one jurisdiction.

He said the owner of the company involved in the deadly Humboldt Broncos crash in Saskatchewan did something similar not long after the 2018 collision.

Harper is in favour of clamping down on "chameleon carriers."

"It's those guys that give the industry a bad name," he said. "We certainly want those bad actors out of the industry.... Just rebranding is not something that is acceptable."

A man in a suit stands and looks at the camera.

Barry Prentice, director of the Transport Institute at the University of Manitoba, says it's difficult to keep tabs on bad companies. (Submitted by Barry Prentice)

Barry Prentice, director of the Transport Institute at the Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba, said the "tremendous decentralization" of Canada's trucking industry results in the kind of enforcement challenges reflected in this case.

It's very difficult to keep tabs on "bad apples" because there are thousands of companies operating across the country.

"We don't have a good system across the country for being able to identify when there are bad actors and to take them out of the market," Prentice said.

"It may be a matter of enforcement or more scrutiny for those sorts of drivers or ... trucking companies to be dealt with ... for the safety of the public."

Manitoba Trucking Association executive director Aaron Dolyniuk said the answer might be in line with Naylor's call for a national database.

"If different jurisdictions have different algorithms of calculating safety ratings and different scoring systems and different ways of rating them, [it] is going to create grey area," he said.

WATCH | Manitoba crash highlights 'chameleon' carrier problem in trucking sector: experts:

Manitoba crash highlights 'chameleon' carrier problem in trucking sector: experts

An Alberta trucking company involved in a fatal semi crash in Brandon, Man., has experts calling for solutions to the long-standing problem of 'chameleon' carriers in the trucking industry.