I agree with every word you say. It's ridiculous that this is allowed.This has been going on for decades, nothing new here move along.
We've lived in Orangeville for over 30 years. When our kids were getting their licences (about 20 years ago), they had to wait months to get a road test slot because all the spaces were pre-booked by Brampton Driving Schools. When Graduated licensing came into effect it actually got much worse. The reason, these same big city residents could come up here and pass their G2 Exit without the need to demonstrate the skills needed to operate a vehicle on a 400 Series highway! We simply don't have a multi-lane roadway with a posted 100 km speed limit within 35 minutes of town. Since the road test is shorter than the time allows, they are not able to test in that environment. It shouldn't be any wonder why there is such carnage on the 410 every day.
IMO, if you have a certain postal code you shouldn't be allowed to take the test outside of your main zone of travel.
This would allow for LOTS of people to get hired by SO to effectively clear the backlog and keep up with demand. Win-win...except for those that aren't capable of actually driving on the 400 series highway, but not much loss there.