Hidden cameras catch driving instructors cheating the system | Marketplace

[Marketplace theme] ♪ [Asha] Bad drivers everywhere. Are they cheating their way onto the roads? We go inside the world of driver training. Where there are no lessons. But cash is king and documents are forged. [man] Come here, come here, come here. [Asha] Public safety is on the line. The risks are that we have drivers out on the road that are not trained and not certified properly. [Asha] This is your Marketplace. What is your government doing to take action? We are in a parking lot

with a big flock of pigeons and a handful of hidden cameras, waiting for an instructor from a driving school. He's paid to teach the rules of the road. But this guy is ready to break some rules to help us cheat our way through driver training. He's here to sell us a certificate that says we've completed a driver's education course, even though we haven't taken a single lesson. He wants us to go with him to a nearby driving school to sign some forged documents. The forms, he

says, will be registered with the Ministry of Transportation. And then, we'll get our certificate. It's against the law, but it sure will save us a bunch of time and money. The certificate he's selling is called a BDE, which stands for Beginner Driver Education. A BDE helps new drivers get discounts on car insurance and allows them to take their driving test sooner. The provincial government has known for years that people buy and sell fraudulent BDEs. In 2007, the Auditor Ge

neral calls for action. So, the province switches proof of certification from paper to online, but has it helped? We're on our way to London, Ontario to learn more about how beginner driving training is supposed to go. -Hey, Ashley. -Hi. -Ready for your lesson? -Yes. [Asha] We'll be taking a ride with Ashley Griffith and her instructor, Puneet Chadha. -Are you excited? -Yes, I am. I'm really excited. -It's my first lesson. -Wow. [Asha] The provincial government sets the rules for d

river education and that means at least 10 hours of in-car lessons like this. So, whenever you're ready, let's put it into drive for me. And go towards that stop sign. [Asha] Ashley is also taking 20 hours of theory, learning the rules of the road. How are the nerves, Ashley? I've only ever driven with my parents. Okay. There's another 10 hours of homework, either in-class or in-car, depending on what might help most. So remember, always keep your hands on the wheel -at all times. -Oh,

yeah. So, in case we were ever to get hit, you wanna be able to control the car. [Asha] The total cost of Ashley's BDE certification? About $750. And yet, here we are with no driver training, able to buy a certificate for half that. As the instructor tells us how they use fake documents to cheat the online system set up by the MTO. That's the Ministry of Transportation. But he's not the only one doing this kind of thing. Websites like Kijiji and Facebook are filled with ads. Ins

tructors promising low prices, nearly perfect passing rates, early road test bookings, and those coveted insurance discount certificates that they're not even supposed to advertise. We call them up. Twenty instructors, to see what they can do for us. [instructor 1 over phone] -Okay. -[Asha] Fourteen offer to sell us BDE certification, no questions asked. And is there any test I have to take for BDE, or course-- [Asha] Another call, another BDE. This one even cheaper and faster. [man

] Okay, so, if I e-transfer you-- How much? $150? [instructor 2] [man] And I can get it by today? [Asha] Tens of thousands of new drivers are looking for actual lessons every year, right across Canada. But training is only mandatory in four provinces: Saskatchewan, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. In Ontario, lessons are entirely up to you. Unless you want your test sooner, and insurance cheaper. Then, you need a BDE. And that's what brings us here. [man] [man] [Asha] H

e makes it clear we've got nothing to worry about. [man] Yeah, that'd be-- [Asha] He tells us, like most instructors, he works for many schools, but is going to take us to one nearby to complete the deal and the paperwork. [Asha] Truth is, we have no intention of going through with a transaction that sure seems illegal, so we tell him we need to think about it. [Asha] As we back away from the deal, the instructor becomes threatening. [man] [instructor] [man] [Asha] He jumps in his

car and chases us down in the parking lot. [instructor] [man] [Asha] We take refuge in a supermarket while he pulls up out front. He sits in his car for a good hour. He sends a threatening text. "You won't like how this is gonna end," it says. But eventually, he leaves, leaving us with a lesson in the dangers of trying to cheat the system. [instructor] [Asha] Later, we asked that instructor to come on camera. To get your perspective on why you tried to sell a BDE certificate to our

colleagues. [instructor] [Asha] We jog his memory with details from that day, and he says he was just trying to be helpful. [instructor] What does negotiate mean, then? What does negotiate mean? [instructor] From what I understand, that is absolutely against the rules. [instructor] No, you can't. Not if you take this-- Not if you take-- Not if you take this program. You can't. You're not supposed to. That's the problem here. [instructor] I mean, that's a job as the instructor or the driving

school. Yes, that's what they're paying for. The instructor refuses to do a formal interview, and later sends another threatening text that's too graphic to share. We catch up again with Puneet Chadha, as he teaches driving theory to high-schoolers in Clinton, Ontario. All right, let's do a quick review, first thing first, What is the difference between a collision and an accident? Does anyone know? [Asha] It's part of their proper BDE training. Crash stats are showing, in 2014, there

was a collision every three minutes. [Asha] He lets us step in to share our findings. -It's all yours. -I can take over. We just want to show you a little bit of an instructor who was trying to sell us a BDE certificate. [instructor] Once we add the BDE course on your behalf, -it goes like this. -Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think it's crazy. That's not fair at all that they can do that. Like, if they don't know what they're doing, then they're not gonna be safe drivers. It's bringing everybody el

se's insurance up, and it's... just sucks for everybody. [Asha] Afterwards, we head out on a little drive test of our own, to hear how all this might be hurting Puneet's livelihood. Students have come to me and basically have admitted that they, Well, yeah, I just paid the guy and I got a certificate. -Really? -Yeah. So you've had students come to you saying that. They have. And I was like, well, why did you do that? Well, I needed to get this quicker and faster. Because I needed to get that

job, or I needed to save money on that insurance. And I was like, well, what did that get you? They were like, nothing, because I failed my first test, because they didn't train me properly. It doesn't shock me. Nothing is shocking me right now. What you guys have discovered. It must be frustrating, though. It is frustrating, because it's affecting all of our business, right? And now those kids are on the road, and they're on the road with us, my kids, and your kid. And-- it- it hurts. It hurts

because... An accident and a collision could happen at any time. [Asha] What happens when we go inside a driving school for a lesson in how to trick the government? [Asha] Coming up. [Asha] We are inside the world of beginner driver education, and the biggest lesson we're learning? It's easy to cheat the system. [Asha] Certificates that say you've taken hours of instruction can be bought for not much money, and no actual training. It begins with phone calls like this to a freelanc

e driving instructor who's looking to make extra cash by selling driver education certificates without the education. [man] So I don't really think I need lessons that much. I'm actually more interested in the certificate you can get for insurance discount. Yeah, so what-- [driving instructor] Oh, okay. [Asha] He sends us here, to a driving school in North Toronto. We have an appointment to buy a BDE certificate for $220.00, with no lessons whatsoever. [man] Hi. [Asha] Seems like a barg

ain. But we say we're concerned about forms they want us to sign. [man] [Asha] She then lays out exactly how this scheme works. [man] [man] [man] [woman] [man] Okay. [man] Ah, okay. [Asha] She makes no bones about the fact this is cheating. [man] [man] [man] [man] [man] -[woman] Wow. -[all laughing] [man] All right. [Asha] 15 years of fooling the government. She tells us we can think it over if we want. She's got others waiting, and offers one more detail about the deception. [woman] Oka

y. [woman] Yeah. [Asha] If the ministry does check, it will all look legit, just like it must have when government inspectors found zero infractions at this school four years ago. That's one of the criticisms that's repeated in the latest report by the Auditor General of Ontario. The government is still not doing enough to catch this kind of behaviour. We meet up with Auditor General, Shelley Spence, to compare notes. What are the risks of people cheating their way through the BDE

process? The risks are that we have drivers out on the road that are not trained, and not certified properly. [Asha] We show her our footage from that North Toronto driving school. [man] And you have done this before, right? [man] Okay. [laughing] Really. Wow. Your first reaction to it? That is a lack of compliance. Of course, you can see the motivations as to why the people would want to get a certificate cheaper or faster. But that's not why we're doing these certificates. We're doing thes

e certificates to help people learn how to drive, and drive safely on the roads. -Isn't that concerning? -It is concerning. And that's why one of our recommendations was for the ministry to actually bring back the mystery shopping component of their compliance work. And it would catch this-- this kind of activity. [Asha] The Auditor General's Office does its own mystery shops. Like us, it hires a firm to go to 14 high-risk driving schools across Ontario. It finds 11 of them were offering

BDE certificates with less than the required 10 hours of in-car training. The auditor says the government hasn't done any mystery shopping of its own since the start of the pandemic because the government says they're too expensive. Why do you think the mystery shopping program is so important? As you could see, the paperwork is easy to-- to forge, and we use that technique actually a lot in different audits, because it is the citizen-facing experience, or the customer-facing experience.

You guys use it a lot on your show as well to really get to what is happening. The government can't tell from that paperwork that this has occurred. [Asha] So when will the province actually fix things? Public safety is at risk here. Is that concerning? Well, we're gonna make sure we come down on-- on bad actors. [Asha] Coming up, after the break. [Asha] Bad drivers are everywhere these days, and we're discovering some of it may have to do with people cheating their way through driver Ed.

[Asha] We call up that school for an explanation. My name is Asha Tomlinson from CBC Marketplace. She tells us what we documented must be a misunderstanding. Well, that's not that's not what you told our colleagues. You actually show them how they could sign forms, saying that they attended lessons and took the training even though they didn't, and you were quite cavalier about it. You joked about the fact that they wouldn't have to do any work and they would get the BD certificate. Okay, we

have this recorded on video. We thought for sure the insurance industry would want to talk about all this since they're handing out discounts to some drivers... who haven't earned them. But the Insurance Bureau of Canada will only say they've been in touch with the Ontario government. We've also been in touch for weeks now. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Look, this isn't about truckers. [Asha] But Transport Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria is refusing to meet. So we look for him on his way in

to caucus. Hi, minister. How are you? Asha from CBC Marketplace. People have been buying and selling beginner driver education certificates with no actual training happening. Public safety is at risk here. What is your government doing to take action? We have a zero tolerance policy for that and we will make sure that that is absolutely addressed. CBC Marketplace called 20 driving instructors. 14 of them were willing to break the rules and cheat the system. That is unacceptable. We're looking at

increasing sanctions on anyone with respect to contravening road safety rules, or-- or taking a form in these type of-- of practices. -Thanks, guys. -Just one more question. When you say sanctions, what do you mean by that? Well, we're always looking at-- at-- at least, we wanna make sure that bad actors are punished for any type of behaviour that is not in line with the rules and regulations. And so we will have zero tolerance for any event. [Asha] Until government does keep a closer eye on t

hings, the hope is that people learning the rules of the road... You had already passed the point of no return, which is that line. [Asha] ...People like Ashley Griffith... So you gotta look at what's the best thing for you to do at that point. -Right? -Okay. [Asha] ...will take a drive down the straight and narrow.