A non-citizen truck driver involved in a fiery collision near Kamloops, British Columbia, that resulted in two fatalities has been ordered to pay a $2,000 fine and serve 18 months of probation. The case is the most recent in a series of Canadian court rulings where truckers received controversially lenient sentences for causing deadly accidents, often due to inattention.
In January, trucker Lovepreet Singh received a nine-month jail sentence for driving his truck at full speed into a Toyota Corolla that was slowing for a construction zone. A brother and sister trapped inside the burning vehicle lost their lives.
Earlier this month, Ontario trucker Sukhwinder Sidhu was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for a similar incident in which he drove his rig into cars stopped at a construction site, killing former Canadian ice dancer Alexandra Paul.
Just two weeks ago, a Thunder Bay, Ontario, judge granted an absolute discharge to Indian trucker Ajitpal Singh for a fatal head-on collision with another trucker. The sentence was explicitly lenient to avoid deportation to India.
In April, a Federal Court judge deferred the deportation of Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, the trucker responsible for the 2018 Humboldt Broncos bus crash that killed 16 people. Sidhu, who served three and a half years of an eight-year sentence, was granted a 17-month pause in deportation proceedings to seek a permanent stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. The decision was condemned by several families of the victims.
Also in April, a British Columbia judge sentenced trucker Dalvir Singh Jhattu to 90 days of house arrest for a 2023 crash that police said could have easily killed multiple people. Jhattu drove his tractor-trailer at full speed into a tow truck that was attaching a Mercedes impounded by the RCMP. Following the sentencing, RCMP released video of the collision as part of its Slow Down, Move Over campaign.
In the most recent Kamloops case, Harpreet Singh pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention in an April 2024 crash where his tractor-trailer crossed the center line and collided with a CN Rail work truck. Both vehicles exploded into flames. Killed were Singh's passenger, Dharminder Singh, and CN Rail employee Juver Balmores, a father of three.
