A Gatineau school bus driver was arrested yesterday, charged with being drunk on the job. The 47-year-old had several small kids on board his minivan and was ready to pull away yesterday after school, when teachers suspected he had been drinking. They called police. The arrest happened outside St. Paul elementary school on Isabelle Street in the Hull sector of Gatineau. Police say when they arrived at the school, they noticed the driver was visibly impaired. They say he blew four times the legal limit. Police say this wasn't the first time he had been caught drinking and driving.

It was the end of the school day yesterday afternoon. Four little kids, between 5 and 10 years old boarded a minivan contracted by the Commission Scolaire des Portages-de-l’Outaouais to drive them home. But teachers noticed the driver appeared drunk.

Cst. Pierre Lanthier is with the Gatineau Police, “They asked the children to get out of the van because the driver was drunk, so they asked the driver to stay there because they had called police.” Lanthier says when police arrived, they asked the driver to do a breath test, which he failed.

47-year-old Stephane Larose was arrested outside the school. Xu Ma knows the driver because his kids take his bus every day and were on it yesterday morning from their home in the Aylmer sector to the Hull elementary school.

“Several times, I saw him I had doubts,” says Ma as he picked his children up from St. Paul school, “but I’m not sure, he was drinking or not.”

Police say Larose blew four times the legal limit; 317 the first time and 313 the second. The legal limit is 80. Police charged him with impaired driving, driving over the legal limit. It wasn't the first time.

"He was convicted in 2009 for drinking and driving, received a one year suspended for driver’s license and fine of $1200.”

Lanthier says Larose had also been driving the mini school bus while his license was suspended because of a medical reason.

The school board doesn't do criminal background checks on bus drivers; that's the responsibility of the company contracted to transport the students

"Everything was okay,” says the president of the board, Jean-Pierre Reid, “nothing came out of that so we're as shock as everybody else.”

Parents are praising the quick actions of the teachers. Still, they question how this could happen in the first place.

"I'm quite upset,” says Suzanne McRae, as she waited for her child outside the school, “because my son was taking one of those buses and fortunately yesterday he wasn't because he had an appointment.”

Xu Ma isn't taking any chances. He's driving his kids to and from school, and considering a school closer to home so they won't have to bus at all.

"It's unbelievable. I never thought something like that could happen in Canada,” he says. Ma and his family recently moved to Aylmer from China.

The school board today found another company to transport the kids. Reid says it is looking at legal options as well.

Meantime, in Huron County, Ont., a number of onlookers alerted police to a bus that was swerving across lanes and into oncoming traffic on Monday afternoon.

Police stopped the bus, which had 10 elementary school children onboard at the time; upon speaking to the driver, officers noted he had been drinking alcohol.

Following a roadside test the driver, a 50-year-old from Listowel, Ont., has his driving privileges suspended for three days.

With a report from CTV Ottawa's Joanne Schnurr.