Shut up and don't drive

Finns who want to get a driver's license in Ontario need to get documents and translations, pay fees and then take tests. A Finnish license holder can't just directly exchange his license to an Ontario license. That's in stark contrast with the policy in Finland, where Canadians can get their license exchanged to a Finnish license for a one-time fee of 41 EUR.

For the first couple of months here, I could use my Finnish license to drive. I had the same rights as Canadian license holders, but now after those first 60 days I need to go get a Canadian license before I can drive again. So in December, I went to a Service Ontario Centre with all my documents and stuff, and, after some minor difficulties, the grumpy official charged me the first fee and gave me a practice license of some sort. I took a knowledge test there and passed and was good to go.

The next thing to do was to book a drive test. The system for getting a driver's license in Canada is quite different than in Finland or other major European countries. In Finland going to a driving school is mandatory; it's almost the only way to get a license. Alternatively you can get a family member to teach you, but (s)he needs to first get a driving instruction license. Either way, the only way to get a license in Finland is to practice driving with a licensed instructor in a controller environment and car fit for practice driving first before getting any kind of a license.

Here things are a bit different. The idea is that practicing is done in real traffic. Ontario has a 2-3 step program called the graduated licensing program. By passing the knowledge test (equivalent to the "kirjallinen koe" in Finland) you get a practice license that lets you drive a car with several restrictions, such as having another person, who's a full license holder, in the car with you etc. The age limit for a driver's license in Ontario is 16 as opposed to 18 in Finland.

But enough of explaining the system. What I did after passing the knowledge test and getting my practice license was that I booked a drive test. The frustrating automated phone reservation system at the drive test center gave me a time that was nearly two months apart from the day I called, in the middle of the day and the drive test center, for me, is in the middle of nowhere. I didn't have much of a choice, so I booked the appointment.

Here you need to bring a car for the test yourself. Drive test centers don't give you a car for the test, and since I didn't go to a driving school here, I didn't get a car from there either. So I paid for a Zipcar.

The people at the drive test center were a half an hour late of their schedule, so my test, which was scheduled to start at 2pm, started at 2.30 instead. I was already skipping work to do the test, and didn't like getting a further delay. As soon as the test started, before I even started driving and got in the car, the test inspector was acting a bit weird. "Hello, how you are?" I said to the guy in the beginning of the test. "Yeah," he grunted. When I started driving, the same attitude continued. He grunted at me for every move I made. He first told me that he won't give me any further instructions or have further conversation, other than necessary, with me, and I told him that's okay, I understand that, and then he started asking me questions, talking to me.

When I was merging on to a highway, he told me to speed up faster, actually asking me to go over the speed limit, which was 100 km/h on the highway, and drive 120 km/h to keep up with the rest of the traffic on the quiet highway. I told him I won't drive faster than the speed limit, because that would be a violation of the traffic law. "Shut up, don't argue with me," he said.

By that point I was just totally bummed out by the whole situation, and started to realize that, for some unexplainable reason, this guy had decided to not let me pass the test, no matter what. So I started wishing that the test would just end and the guy would get out of my car.

At the end of the test, he told me that I had failed, because I didn't speed up quickly enough when merging on to the highway, and because I started moving again after I had correctly stopped at a stop sign and didn't look like I was going to wait for an elderly person on the other side of the intersection who was going to jaywalk across the street where there was no crosswalk.

I told the guy that his decision was his and that I had to put up with it because this is the system here, but I told him that I've had a Finnish driver's license for 13 years that enables me to drive anything from passenger cars to trucks and small buses in 27 countries in the European Union. I said I find it senseless and extremely frustrating that Ontario treats Canadian driver's license holders this way, while Finland lets Canadians to exchange their license.

Of course this poor inspector guy is just doing his job, and he can't change the system, and therefore I have sent letters to the Ontario ministry of transportation since last fall, and to the Finnish embassy in Ottawa. A few EU countries, like Germany, Austria, France and Belgium, and countries like Japan (where they drive on the other side of the road than in Canada) and Korea have got reciprocal agreements with Ontario to enable people from those countries to get an Ontario license without any testing. The Finnish embassy and the ministry of transportation say that they are currently working on a reciprocal agreement with Québec and then Ontario is next. The process is likely to take some time, like 6 months to a year, still. I don't know exactly what Ontario wants for a reciprocal agreement, other than paperwork, but I've heard rumors that they actually ask for a payment to settle these agreements. Whether that's true or just a blatant rumor, I think Ontario should respect the fact that Finland gives Canadians licenses without testing and honor Finnish licenses the same way that Canadian licenses are honored in Finland. Canada has signed the same Vienna Convention on Road Traffic as Finland has.

I never claimed I was a perfect driver, and I understand very well that different countries have different rules, but Ontario's system makes no sense. The failed test cost me about $150 dollars in fees for the test and the Zipcar, and I still need to pay more, if I want to take another test to try again to get a license. So what is that you want, Ontario - my money? How poor and hungry for money is the system here, really? I don't even like this place enough to care for getting a license or any of the papers that cost me so much time and money, but since we are gonna stay here for a little while longer still, I need to try and get something done.

At the end of my test, when the guy left, I said "thanks, have a nice day." "Yeah," the guy grunted in reply. When I got home and googled "Ontario drive test", I quickly found other people with similar experiences and frustrations, and a couple stories about scandals surrounding driving instruction in Ontario. Scandals, of course. After all, this is Canada.

Ontario's "strictness" could make a bit more sense to me, if Canada had a fabulous record in road safety. But it doesn't. I could tell that just by the way I see a lot of people driving here, how often they ignore using the signal and some other basic rules, but of course one man's observations don't qualify as proof. So let's pull out the statistics:
Selected risk values for the year 2006 in the International Road Traffic and Accident Database
Canada meets road safety challenge