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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Toronto Star should give all facts instead of targeting a single group, says Desi Trucking Magazine

The Toronto Star recently wrote an article, which implied that Indo-Canadian truck drivers are heavily involved with the North American drug trade. Even though there may be a few bad apples who are involved in the drug trade, the article tries to emphasize that most truckers who are involved are Indo-Canadian. In fact, 99.9% of these truckers are hardworking, trustworthy, and honest people. Truckers come from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and to label a specific group is uncalled for. What the Toronto Star should have done is given exact numbers as to how many truckers are caught, and of those, what percentages belong to the various ethnicities. The article goes at length to specify that “Indo-Canadian truckers from the GTA are caught” – there is a futile attempt to show that many of these truckers come from families who are not well off; but the attempt is minimal at best.

The article should have focused on the general problem of drug trafficking and its relation to the trucking industry. An article, written by Stanley Tromp, on July 31, 2011 was much better at showing that the recession and poor wages of truck drivers is what forces some of them to get involved in the transportation of illegal drugs. Not once did Tromp specify a certain ethnic group as being involved – rather, he highlighted a report by the RCMP that stated the reasons why some get involved in the drug trade.

Toronto Star reporter, Raveena Aulakh, is correct that about 60% of the GTA truck drivers are Indo-Canadian. So based on numbers and statistics alone, it would not be incorrect to assume that more members from this group are involved in this problem. But, what are the exact numbers of truckers from other ethnic groups who are involved and what are the overall percentages? These are questions that should also have been answered, or at least, discussed.

A regular article points a finger at an ethnic group and lays blame; but a great newspaper article would rather discuss the entire problem and give examples of truckers from various ethnic backgrounds who transport drugs. Desi Trucking Magazine is passing on our concerns to the Toronto Star newspaper so that they can be more fair in future articles.