Student drivers can't find a road test appointment in Ottawa until 2022
Some Ottawa drivers are scrambling to find a road test appointment, as the Ontario government resumes in-vehicle road tests.
The government says there have been more than 400,000 road tests cancelled across the province due to closures during the entire pandemic. In-vehicle road tests resumed this week with COVID-19 restrictions in place, but appointments are hard to come by.
Elliot Gentle, 17, describes looking at the online booking system as "all X's until April of next year."
Gentle wants to book his G2 test as soon as possible, so he took the soonest appointment he could find, and his family will be driving him six hours away to do it.
"I currently have an appointment booked in Sudbury… in October, that was the only available time spots," says Gentle.
His mother Maria McLaughlin says they have spent hours online trying to book a test.
"(Sudbury) was the only spot within an eight-hour drive of Ottawa that had anything this year," said McLaughlin.
She says her son wants his licence to be more independent.
"He is saving his money to buy a car and is going to college next year," said McLaughlin.
The province says they are working on the backlog and are investing more than $16 million to increase road testing capacity at all DriveTest centres across the province. This includes hiring 167 additional driver examiners. This will be on top of nearly 100 temporary examiners the province announced back in the fall.
The province says they are also adding six temporary road-testing locations that will be located within a 30-minute driving radius from existing locations with the greatest demand. None are coming to Ottawa.
In a statement to CTV News Ottawa, the province says, "DriveTest is unable to prioritize customers with cancelled appointments. The current road test booking system does not have the functionality to prioritize road test appointments for specific individuals or groups."
Josh Schmidt spent hours online last week looking for an appointment and found a cancellation at the Walkley Road DriveTest location.
"I just looked all the time, I kept checking the site I checked so many different places, and I got lucky- someone must have cancelled so there was one test in the one day," said Schmidt.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
For the first time in report's history, Canada's air quality worse than U.S.
Air quality in Canada is now worse than in the U.S., according to the 6th Annual World Air Quality Report. Of the 15 most polluted cities in the two countries, 14 were in Canada.
A newspaper says video of Prince William and Kate should halt royal rumour mill. That's a tall order
Prince William and his wife Catherine have been filmed at a farm shop near their Windsor home, The Sun newspaper reported -- the first footage of Kate since she had abdominal surgery for an unspecified condition two months ago.
WATCH LIVE As former prime minister Mulroney lies in state, public tributes in Ottawa begin
Members of the public who wish to pay tribute to Brian Mulroney can visit his casket in Ottawa starting this afternoon.
BREAKING Roy McMurtry, former Ontario attorney general, dies at 91
CTV News has confirmed that former Ontario attorney general Roy McMurtry has died.
Hertz CEO out following electric car 'horror show'
The company, which announced in January it was selling 20,000 of the electric vehicles in its fleet, or about a third of the EVs it owned, is now replacing the CEO who helped build up that fleet, giving it the company’s fifth boss in just four years.
'You ask for your money, they disappear': Ontario man loses $17K to AI crypto scam
A Toronto man is spreading the word of a cryptocurrency scam that lures victims using AI-generated news sites after he lost $17,000 in investments.
Images taken deep inside melted Fukushima reactor show damage, but leave many questions unanswered
Images taken by miniature drones from deep inside a badly damaged reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant show displaced control equipment and misshapen materials but leave many questions unanswered, underscoring the daunting task of decommissioning the plant.
DEVELOPING February inflation rate slows to 2.8% as price growth unexpectedly eases
Canada's annual inflation rate unexpectedly fell to 2.8 per cent last month, amid sharp declines in cellular and internet services as well as slower grocery price growth.
High thoughts: The habits of Canadian cannabis users are revealed in a new StatCan report
Statistics Canada has conducted a series of surveys to measure the impacts of legalized cannabis since the Cannabis Act took effect in 2018. The latest one, the 2023 National Cannabis Survey, sheds light on users' preferences and habits last year.