Ontario, 2022 data year
Reputation, next to the measurements
- Two published records, 65 rows and one audit
- Checked against the stored record on 2026-08-27
- Every comparison run against a median we compute and label as ours
The centres at the top of the pass rate table are small, and the centres most people actually book are large, urban and bunched below the middle, which is why 69 percent of every road test in this release was taken at a centre below our median.
What the 2022 release measures
Median centre in the release
73.31%
The middle row when all 65 of them are lined up by pass rate
Computed by us from the CBC freedom of information release of Ontario DriveTest results (2022 data)verified 2026-08-27Pass rate with every road test counted once
69.23%
The same rows weighted by how many tests each centre ran
Computed by us from the CBC freedom of information release of Ontario DriveTest results (2022 data)verified 2026-08-27Share of road tests taken below that median
69%
Counted across every row that carries a test count
Computed by us from the CBC freedom of information release of Ontario DriveTest results (2022 data)verified 2026-08-27End to end spread of the release
+28.23 points
Between Bancroft at the top and Brampton at the bottom
Computed by us from the CBC freedom of information release of Ontario DriveTest results (2022 data)verified 2026-08-27All four are our own arithmetic over rows that each carry the release as their source, and each tile says so. No provincial average appears anywhere on this page.
What can be checked here, and what cannot
Four things about this comparison, put before the tables rather than after them.
What this page can check
Two published bodies of work about the same centres: one year of road test results released under freedom of information law, covering all 65 rows, and a value for money audit of DriveTest that named two of them.
What it cannot check
Reputation itself. We hold no survey of what learners say about test centres, no sample of opinions and no way to measure a name that travels by word of mouth, so this page never claims to know which centres people talk about.
Why the two columns are never subtracted
The audit and the release are different bodies asking different questions of different years. A difference between their figures is as likely to be a difference in method as a difference in driving, so neither is taken away from the other anywhere on this page.
Where the middle figure comes from
No provincial average appears here. The release does not agree with itself about its own provincial figure, so every comparison on this page runs against a median of 73.31% that we work out from the released rows and label as ours.
There is one documented case of reputation moving behaviour, and it comes from the auditor general rather than from us. The audit found drivers travelling away from their home centre to sit the test somewhere else, and put the difference for one such pair at 22 percentage points. That finding is the reason this page exists. Source: Office of the Auditor General of Ontario, value for money audit of DriveTest (2023), verified 2026-08-27.
The same centre, measured twice by two different bodies
The two Ontario centres named in the value for money audit, beside their own rows in the freedom of information release
Office of the Auditor General of Ontario, value for money audit of DriveTest (2023)verified 2026-08-27| Centre | Auditor general, 2023 audit | Release, 2022 data year | Road tests, 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owen Sound | 89% | 88.06% | 4,406 |
| Brampton | 57% | 59.90% | 48,155 |
The two columns are not subtracted from each other anywhere on this page, and they should not be read as a change over time. They are different bodies asking different questions of different years, and a difference between them is as likely to be a difference in method as a difference in driving. What the pair is good for is the point it makes on its own: a centre does not have one true number. It has a number per measurement, and both of these are real.
That matters for reputation, because a reputation is a single sticky label. Once a centre is known as the easy one, it stays known as the easy one long after the year that earned it. Two rows for the same centre, both published, both defensible, is the plainest argument we have that the label is doing more work than the evidence behind it.
The travelling drivers, and what their gap actually measures
The auditor general found that drivers from Brampton who took their road test in Guelph passed at a rate 22 percentage points higher than they did at home. It is the closest thing to a measurement of centre shopping that anyone has published, and it is worth reading carefully rather than quickly.
In the 2022 release those same two centres sit 7.05 percentage points apart: Guelph at 66.95% against Brampton at 59.90%. Different bodies and different years, so those two gaps are not the same measurement and we do not subtract one from the other. But the shape of them is instructive. The audit is following one group of drivers into two places. The release is counting everyone who tested at each place.
Which is to say the 22 points do not sit between the two centres. A large part of that gap belongs to the drivers who chose to travel, and drivers who will drive an hour to a test are not a random sample of anybody. Read the audit figure as a fact about a group, not as a discount available to you.
Where the road tests actually happen
Reputations attach to the ends of a table. Road tests do not. These are the ten centres that recorded the most road tests in the 2022 data year, with the distance from our median beside each one, and 9 of the ten sit below it.
The ten Ontario centres running the most road tests in the 2022 data year
Computed by us from the CBC freedom of information release of Ontario DriveTest results (2022 data)verified 2026-08-27| Centre | Road tests | Pass rate | Against our median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oshawa | 70,265 | 68.34% | -4.97 |
| Guelph | 55,274 | 66.95% | -6.36 |
| Port Union | 54,329 | 68.21% | -5.10 |
| Downsview | 53,255 | 62.49% | -10.82 |
| Newmarket | 49,327 | 62.14% | -11.17 |
| Brampton | 48,155 | 59.90% | -13.41 |
| Kitchener | 47,522 | 64.48% | -8.83 |
| Orangeville | 46,346 | 60.90% | -12.41 |
| Oakville | 43,931 | 74.63% | +1.32 |
| Mississauga | 40,381 | 63.93% | -9.38 |
The centres at the top of the pass rate table are small. The centres most people actually book are large, urban, and bunched into the middle and the lower half of the table. That is why the median and the test weighted figure at the top of this page do not agree with each other, and it is why 69 percent of all the road tests in this release were taken at a centre below the median. The typical Ontario road test is not taken at a typical Ontario centre.
What a centre level pass rate is measuring
A pass rate at a centre is three things layered on top of each other, and only one of them is the examiner. The first is the road network. A test that runs on quiet two lane roads and a test that runs through six lanes of arterial traffic are not the same drive, even when they are marked from the same sheet. The second is the traffic on that network on the day, which nobody controls. The third is the mix of people who book there: first attempts against retests, drivers who trained locally against drivers who travelled in, drivers who took a course against drivers who did not.
None of those three are visible in a percentage. So a high number is not evidence that the examiners there are generous, and a low number is not evidence that they are harsh. Both are much more likely to be telling you about the roads outside the door and the people who walked through it.
Sources
The median, the test weighted figure, the share of tests below the median and every distance from the median are ours, computed from rows that each carry the release as their source. Everything else on this page is quoted, with the body that published it named beside it.
CBC News freedom of information release of Ontario DriveTest results (2022 data)
Verified 2026-08-27
Covers the 2022 data year.
Computed by us from the CBC freedom of information release of Ontario DriveTest results (2022 data)
Verified 2026-08-27
Median and volume weighted figures are our own arithmetic over the per centre rows in that release, not numbers the release states.
Office of the Auditor General of Ontario, value for money audit of DriveTest (2023)
Verified 2026-08-27
Figures as published in the audit, with a follow up review published in 2025.