The Blog Has Moved

After 1 year, 35 posts, and over 40,000 views, my blog will be moving from WordPress.com to www.SimonBorys.ca.

Going forward, new content will only be available at www.SimonBorys.ca.  This WordPress site will remain open for a time so as to preserve any links to the older posts. Commenting on this site is now disabled.

As you will see when you visit the new site, the layout remains very similar and all of the original content has been imported to the new site.  Please update your links and bookmarks to the new address at www.SimonBorys.ca.  See you there!

 

Demerit Points in Ontario

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Demerit Points in Ontario

This post will be about dispelling 4 myths surrounding the demerit point system for traffic offences in Ontario. But first, a brief explanation of the demerit point system is in order to ensure that we are all on the same page.

The Demerit Point System In Ontario

Certain offences under the Highway Traffic Act carry either 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7 points. Some people say you “lose” these points off your licence, but actually a clean licence has zero points attached to it, so technically you “gain” points. The points are automatically assessed when you are convicted of an offence in court, not when you are charged. Demerit points stay on your driver’s licence history (a.k.a. driving abstract) for 2 years, while the record of conviction is generally visible to police for 3 years (read my post about that issue here)

Points For Novice Drivers

If you have a G1, G2, M1, or M2 Ontario driver’s licence and you accumulate between 2 and 5 points, you will be sent a warning letter from the MTO. If you accumulate between 6 points and 8 points you may be called in to attend an interview with the MTO and explain why you should be allowed to keep your licence. Your licence can be suspended if you do not attend the interview or if you fail the interview. At 9 points your licence will be suspended for 60 days, from the time that you surrender your licence, or 2 years if you fail to surrender your licence. In addition, it is an offence under s. 35(1)(b) of the Highway Traffic Act to be in possession of a suspended licence.

Points for Fully Licenced Drivers

For a fully licenced drivers the warning letter comes if you accumulate between 6 and 8 points, the interview for between 9 and 14 points, and the automatic suspension for 15+ points (for 30 days or 2 years).

Now on to the myths.

Demerit Point Myths

Myth #1: If you take your ticket to court, the officer/prosecutor/judge can reduce or drop the points. Simon Says: Wrong! I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this, but it’s just not true. Demerit points are administratively dealt with by the MTO after a conviction has been registered. No one, including a judge, has the authority to affect the way demerit points are assessed.

That being said, you can sometimes make an arrangement with the prosecutor to plead guilty to a different (lesser) offence, which carries fewer points. You often see this with speeding charges, where the prosecutor will allow you to plead to a lesser speed which carries fewer points, but it can be done with other charges as well, such as Careless Driving reduced to Follow to Closely.

Myth #2 involves how the points associated with multiple charges arising from a single incident are applied. For example, if you get charged and convicted of Careless Driving (6 points), Failing to Remain at the Scene of a Collision (7 points) and Failing to Properly Wear a Seatbelt (2 points), even if you had a clean record before this you should be getting 15 points and you’d be looking at an automatic suspension , right? Simon Says: Wrong again!

If multiple convictions arise out of the same set of circumstances then you are only assessed the points associated with the single largest ticket. So in my example above, you’d actually only get 7 points and not 15.

Myth #3 involves how points are assessed when a suspension of the driver’s licence (for length of time) is part of the sentence in court. Let’s take my example above of the person who gets convicted of Careless (6 points), Fail to Remain (7 points), and Seatbelt (2 points), but also Driving While Under Suspension (this actually has no points), and as part of the penalty, the Justice of the Peace imposes the mandatory 6 month suspension of the licence. Would that person still be looking at 7 points as I discussed above? Nope!

If a suspension is imposed part of the sentence, no points are assessed against the person’s licence. Obviously you could use this to your advantage if you were negotiating with the prosecutor for a plea bargain and you wanted to avoid the points, but I wouldn’t recommend doing so without consulting a lawyer or paralegal and making sure you’re aware of all of the possible ripple effects. For one thing, you’d then have to report on an insurance application that you’ve had your driver’s licence suspended and they don’t look too favourably on that. For another, points aren’t everything, as I will discuss in Myth #4.

Myth #4: If I avoid the points my insurance rates won’t go up. Simon Says: Very wrong! Insurance companies don’t classify offences by points, they classify them by seriousness and put them into categories like Minor, Major, and Serious. True, the more serious offences generally do have higher points associated with them, but it’s not the points that the insurance company cares about, it’s the seriousness of the offence and what that says about the risk to insure you.

Serious offences (such as Careless or Fail to Remain) are going to be classified as Major or Serious regardless of whether the MTO assesss points against your licence for them. Remember, points is an administrative action by the MTO. The only people who care about points are the MTO and you (if you get too many). Your insurance company isn’t going to reclassify a Fail to Remain charge from Serious to Minor just because your licence got suspended and you didn’t get the points.

Conclusion

In my experience, demerit points are a very confusing issue for most people faced with a traffic ticket that carries points. I sincerely hope this has educated you about the way the demerit point system works in Ontario and that it allows you to make more informed choices if you have to deal with one of these ticket. Please feel free to share this article with others.

About the author: Simon Borys is a former police officer who is currently studying law at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario to become a criminal lawyer.

What is the best excuse to get out of a speeding ticket?

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What is the best excuse to get out of a speeding ticket?

After a brief hiatus from posting for my law school exams, I’m back to answer perhaps the most frequently asked question of all time for police officers: What is the best excuse to get out of a speeding ticket?

During my time doing speed enforcement I heard more excuses than I can count, some were pretty lame, others pretty good, but according to a study by 2 psychology researchers at the University of Waterloo, who surveyed 1000 motorists who had been charged with speeding, the most effective excuse was simply, “I’m sorry.”

Based on my own experience I would agree.  Police officers hear lots of excuses from the people they deal with and sometimes it’s just refreshing to hear someone accept responsibility for their actions and apologize.  That may create some good will on the officer’s part and I think (as does one of the authors of the study) that it can also give them the impression that you are less likely to speed again than the person who denies that they did it or makes excuses for why.

One of an officer’s objectives in doing any kind of enforcement is to deter people (individually and collectively) from committing the offence in the future.  Obviously one way to do this is through issuing tickets, but if an officer perceives that an individual’s remorse is evidence of the fact that they are less likely to speed again, they may feel there is no need to issue a ticket in order to deter future speeding.

That being said, the study still only found that this excuse worked in about 30% of cases where motorists apologized and it only worked for motorists going about 40 km/hr over the limit.  When it did work, it lowered the fine, on average, by about $51.

This is definitely an interesting study, but it certainly doesn’t pave the way for people to speed and expect to get off scott free!  The study will be published in June in the Journal of Law and Human Behaviour and you can read more about it in an article in the Kitchener-Waterloo Record.

What this study doesn’t address is whether excuses for speeding work in court.  While, “I’m sorry” might help you get the fine lowered if you are pleading guilty, no excuse is likely to help you be found “not guilty”.

The reason for this is that speeding is an absolute liability offence, which means that if you take your ticket to trial, once all the elements of the offence are proven, you can not raise any defence other than that of duress (which basically means that you were speeding in response to a threat of death or serious bodily harm to yourself or another person).  For an absolute liability offence it doesn’t matter why you were doing it and if you try to offer an excuse in court the Justice of the Peace will likely explain to you what I just said and tell you that the “why” is irrelevant.

So if you get caught speeding, you might want to just say, “I’m sorry”.  If you get the ticket anyway you can try saying it again in court, but if that doesn’t help, save your breath.

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Simon Borys: former police officer, law student, aspiring criminal lawyer

Kingston, Ontario

My Interview With The Lawyer’s Weekly Newspaper

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My Interview With The Lawyer’s Weekly Newspaper

Check out my interview with Chris Guly of The Lawyers Weekly on the use of social media in the future of the practice of law. Excerpt reproduced below. Please visit The Lawyer’s Weekly website to read the full article or pick up this week’s paper issue.

First-year Queen’s University law student Simon Borys is at least three years away from his call to the Ontario Bar, but he already has his future career in law pretty well mapped out.

The 28-year-old former police officer wants to practice criminal law either solo or with a small firm.

“It will allow me the flexibility to grow and change and adapt at my own pace,” say Borys, who spent three-and-half years as a constable with the Waterloo Regional Police Service prior to entering law school last fall.

“One thing I found about policing is that it’s very slow to adapt. As a public-sector organization that is also paramilitary — which makes it even more top heavy — it moves at a dinosaur’s pace and I found that very frustrating.

“For someone like myself, who’s young, ambitious, who’s driven, who’s aware of technology and who’s prepared to utilize technology to further their ambitions, I find it very difficult to work in an environment like that.”

While Borys’ lawyerly aspirations will find him dealing with a Criminal Code dating back to the late 19th century, his criminal law practice will also be immersed in a Web 2.0 world.

Like many of his peers, he’s connected to various social media: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. He has his own website(SimonBorys.ca) with a blog, which combines his policing past with his future as a lawyer. It features a section in which he explains applications of the law — from disturbances in schools to roadside alcohol-related driver’s license suspensions — Criminal Code sections he dealt with regularly as a cop.

Borys also has a section on police and law news (including a post on Toronto Family Court Justice Harvey Brownstone’s Family Matters online talk show) and a clever feature called “Police Myths.” (Sample question: Does a police officer always have to issue a ticket? Simple answer: No.)

In relying on his experience and expertise, Borys has carved out a niche for himself on the web and created a unique self-marketing tool that helped land him a part-time job this summer working with a criminal lawyer in Kingston, Ont.

Other practitioners in the city take note: Simon says you have “poor” usage of the Internet.

“Of the half-dozen or so regularly practising criminal lawyers in Kingston, only two or three have a strong web presence,” says Borys.

“Sole practitioners and smaller firms have relied on word-of-mouth referrals because they started at a time when that was the primary way they got business.

“But when people of my generation, who grew up with the Internet and Facebook, get into practice and start utilizing those social media resources, they are going to take a huge market share away from practitioners not connected online.”

He explains that a first-time offender charged with impaired driving won’t likely know which criminal lawyer to contact. “The first thing they will do is a Google search for maybe ‘Kingston AND impaired AND lawyer.’ They won’t look at the phone book.

“So a Kingston criminal defence lawyer with a website and a blog, who’s on Twitter and Facebook or any other online social media outlet, is going to have several hits on the first page of Google’s search results — and get more business.”

Or, people can do a search on one site, such as the online legal directory and referral service offered by LawyerLocate.ca Inc., which is based in Borys’ hometown, Kitchener, Ont.

…

Ultimately, though, the social network in cyberspace can yield tremendous opportunity for lawyers, according to Simon Borys, who hopes one day to be a member of that group, using technology to succeed at his practice.

“If you want to use social media for advertising, marketing and getting business, it’s all about multiple points of contact. You have to be where your clients are — on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or wherever it is your prospective or existing clients are,” he explains.

“The tolerance to look for answers these days is small. We live in a society that has a very short attention. So people aren’t inclined and don’t have time to do a lot of research to find a lawyer. You have to come to them.”

Simon Borys
Law Student and Aspiring Criminal Lawyer
Queen’s University
Kingston, Ontario

Does a police officer ever have to give you a ticket?

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Does a police officer ever have to give you a ticket?

This is something I hear frequently from people who have received a ticket.  “The officer said he was required by law to give me a ticket,” or “the officer said he had to give me a ticket because there was a collision (or some other reason).”  Is this true?  Simon says: NO!

Police officers frequently do say this to people and when they do they are trying to convey the message that they’d prefer not to issue the ticket or they don’t believe you deserve the ticket, but they “have to” issue it anyway.  But a police officer never actually has to give you a ticket, regardless of whether there is a collision or not.  They have discretion, which they can exercise to refrain from issuing a ticket in any situation where a charge under the Highway Traffic Act or the Compulsory Automobile Insurance Act is a possibility.  Moreover, an officer always has to have reasonable grounds to issue a ticket or lay a charge, which, if you think about it, is inconsistent with the idea that they might ever have to issue a ticket in circumstances where they didn’t believe it was warranted.

The fact is, when an officer gives you a ticket it’s usually because they feel you deserve it – or at least they believe you committed the offence, even if they don’t think you deserve the ticket, per se.  Why then do they say that they “had to” give you the ticket?  Well, there are three common reasons why.  Usually it’s because they just don’t want to get into an argument with you about it at the roadside and they feel that if they can redirect your anger to some unspecified force that’s compelling them to issue the ticket, you’ll be less likely to get upset with them and argue.  Usually, this is exactly what happens, which is why officers continue to do it.

A second reason why officers tell you they “had to” issue you a ticket is because there has been a collision, which you have caused, and the officer doesn’t want the “innocent” party to feel like you’re not being punished for causing a collision.  This reason makes good sense too, especially considering that collisions frequently end in civil lawsuits for negligence and the officer doesn’t want to find himself at a discovery hearing trying to explain to the plaintiff and their lawyer why they didn’t charge the at fault driver.

The third common reason is that officers have specifically been assigned to go out and get tickets.  This is usually part of a co-ordinated traffic blitz or perhaps the officer is just assigned specifically to traffic enforcement.  In this case there is an expectation on the officer from their bosses that they will return at the end of their shift with a certain number of tickets.  In my experience, this often results in officers giving tickets that they might, in other circumstances, have dealt with by a warning.  But because of this pressure, they feel as though they “have to” issue the ticket and they tell you this so you don’t think they’re just a heartless jerk.

Contrary to popular belief, most police officers are not, in fact, heartless jerks and, although traffic enforcement is an important part of their job, they’d probably rather be doing something else.  So if an officer hands you that yellow slip of paper and tells you, “sorry, I have to,” don’t believe him…but do cut him some slack.  He’s just doing his job; a part of his job which is both necessary and important.

Is it illegal to warn people about an upcoming radar trap?

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Is it illegal to warn people about an upcoming radar trap?

One of my readers brought up an interesting question: Is it illegal to warn people about an upcoming radar trap?  This question was prompted by a situation they heard of where a driver passed police set up at a radar trap and began flashing their high beams at oncoming traffic to warn them.  One of the oncoming vehicles was actually a police cruiser, who made a U-turn, pulled them over and issued a ticket.

So, is it illegal to warn people about an upcoming radar trap?  The answer to this question is, as I have learned in law school, the same as the answer to virtually every legal question: It depends.  There is nothing in the Highway Traffic Act or the associated Regulations which expressly prohibits this.  It would, perhaps, be possible for an officer to argue that it meets the definition of Obstructing Police under s. 129 of the Criminal Code.  There is a case from the BC Court of Appeal (R v Saunders (1971)) where a man was convicted of pointing out to people in the skid row area an undercover officer who was there for the purpose of arresting beggars.  But s. 129 requires that the purpose, not the result of the action be wilful obstruction (see R v. Tortolano, Kelly, and Cadwell (1975) Ont Court of Appeal).  This means that the fact that police are not catching speeders at that location is not enough to sustain a charge, it would be necessary to show that the accused actually had the purpose of preventing them from performing a duty (enforcing the speed limit).  My own opinion is that this is a bit of a stretch, but please don’t take that as approval for doing this.

Why? Because even if you escape criminal liability for warning people of an upcoming radar trap by flashing your high beams, you may still be committing an offence under the Highway Traffic Act.  Not for warning people (as I said, that is not prohibited), but for failing to use you low beams when within 150 meters of an approaching vehicle or 60 meters of a vehicle they are following, as required by s. 168 of the Highway Traffic Act.  Note, however, that this only applies when headlights are required by the Highway Traffic Act, which, as stated in s. 62(1) is from 1/2 hour before sunset to 1/2 hour after sunrise, or at any other time when vehicles are not clearly visible at a distance of 150 meters due to unfavourable light or atmospheric conditions.  This means it does not apply during regular daylight hours.  The fine for this offence is $110.

So, as I said, it depends, but I still wouldn’t advise it.  If you get caught doing this you will likely be facing an irritated police officer who may be able to find some other technical or obscure document or equipment violation you are unwittingly committing.  If they do, don’t expect any leniency!

Clio Teams Up With Google

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Clio Teams Up With Google

Google is fast becoming an all-in-one platform for internet users. Recently Clio teamed up with Google to better integrate the practice management software with user’s existing Google and Gmail accounts. The result of this is 3 new features which I will discuss in this post.

Clio and Google Apps

First, you can now add Clio to your Google Apps. The benefit of this is that you only have to be signed on to your Gmail account and you can access Clio without having to sign on separately there. If you’re like me and you live signed on to Gmail, either on your desktop or your mobile device, this is very handy. The potential downside is that if you leave your computer accessible while you’re still logged into Gmail, you have also unintentionally allowed someone access to your confidential client files in Clio. Consider the situation where you sign on to a public computer at a library or office and then close down the browser without properly logging off Gmail. Someone could potentially open the browser back up and you’d still be logged into Gmail, and by extension, Clio. (Note: this actually depends on the settings of the browser.) While this kind of integration can be very handy, it also puts the onus on users to be more careful about securing access.

Instructions on how to set up Clio with Google Apps can be found here.

Clio and Google Calendar

The second feature is that the Clio calendar can now be synced with Google Calendar, which most people probably already have synced with their mobile device. This is obviously very handy, because it means that you only have to add important dates like court, hearings, filing deadlines, meetings, etc into Clio and you can view them in other places that might be more accessible to you (i.e. your Blackberry or iPhone). This is a two-way sync. Any changes you make in Google Calendar will also be reflected in Clio!

Instructions on how to set up Clio with Google Calendar can be found here.

Clio and Google Contacts

The third feature is that you can also sync your Clio contacts with your Google Contacts (and by extension your mobile device), in the same fashion as with the Google Calendar. This is also a two-way sync and allows you to easily maintain your contacts in Clio, Google, and on your smart phone. This way you can avoid the extra step of logging into Clio to get the email address of a Client you want to contact; you can just do it from your phone or Gmail account.

Instructions on syncing Clio with your Google Contacts can be found here.

How The New Features Stack Up

I think these are some great additions to Clio. The best thing about cloud based practice management systems is that, coupled with a good scanner, they can get everything – all your files, emails, letters, contacts, calendar dates, memos, research, etc – into one place: online. Additions like these go the extra step by allowing you more convenient points of access to this information. If you’re using Gmail and Google Calendar, you can now access your Clio contacts and calendar dates through there. If you have Google Sync on your smart phone, you can even integrate all of this information into your phone. The convenience of having everything at my fingertips and not having to log on to this and click here and go there, is the kind of convenience I expect from modern technology! In this Clio seems to deliver well.

Police Powers and The G20: Why the Public Works Protection Act Was Unnecessary

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In the following paper I advance the argument that the use of the Public Works Protection Act at the G20 by police was unnecessary and inappropriate.  I suggest that they had ample existing authority under statute and common law to do the job they needed to do.

Police Powers and The G20: Why the Public Works Protection Act Was Unnecessary

There has been a great deal of discussion and controversy recently over the actions of police at the G20 in Toronto in June.  Much of the debate revolves around the use of the Public Works Protection Act (hereafter referred to as ‘the Act’) by police to provide security at the event.

A number of specific issues have been identified by the media, the public, and the government regarding the actions of the police in general, and specifically the use and implementation of the Act at the event.  However, this paper will not address those issues.  They have already received a great deal of attention and no doubt will continue to in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the theory that the Public Works Protection Act was unnecessary and inappropriate for the G20.  It was overbroad and arbitrary for the task at hand.  Police have existing statutory and common law powers which I will argue would have sufficed and been far less intrusive on the Charter rights of the public.

A Brief history of the Public Works Protection Act

Contrary to statements made by the media, the Public Works Protection Act is not a secret, nor is it a new law.  It was created in 1939, following the outbreak of World War II, and was revised to its current form in 1990.  The Act is very short, but very broad and very powerful.  It may not be well known to police or the public, but it is used every day to provide security at court houses, government buildings and other infrastructure points within the province.

Section 1 of the Act defines a “public work”.  Of note here is subsection (c), which gives the Lieutenant Governor in Council the authority to designate other buildings or places as a public work.  This is the authority under which a portion of downtown Toronto was reclassified as a public work for the G20.

Section 3 sets out the power of arrest for a peace officer or guard.  Clearly these power are quite broad, perhaps understandably so, given their intended purpose to allow officers and guards to protect the infrastructure of the province.  However, they are clearly unprecedented when compared to any other Federal or Provincial statute.

Section 5(2) provides the arrest authority for failing to comply and, finally, section 5(1) sets out the offence.

Adaption of the Public Works Protection Act

Ontario Regulation 233/10 was created on June 2 and filed on June 14.  It was scheduled to be effective from June 21 until June 28, but was not published in the Ontario Gazette until July 3.

Schedule 1 and 2 describe “the zone” in downtown Toronto which this regulation makes into a “public work”.

Why was adapting the Public Works Protection Act to the G20 a problem?

Even acknowledging that the majority of arrests at the G20 were not under the Public Works Protection Act, there are still issues with the arbitrariness and overbroadness of arrests conducted under the act, which seems to be one of the issues people are most upset about.

Existing Authorities

As stated earlier, the aim of this paper is to suggest that police had existing statutory and common law authorities which could have been used instead of the Public Works Protection Act and would have, arguably, resulted in far less of a public outcry.  It is to three of these authorities that I will now turn.

The first authority is the common law power of investigative detention.  Best articulated in R. v. Mann (2004)¹, Iacobucci J., wrote for the majority of the Supreme Court that authority exists in common law for police to detain an individual if they have “articulable cause”.  Articulable cause was defined by Doherty J.A. in R. v. Simpson (1993)² as “a constellation of objectively discernible facts which give the detaining officer reasonable cause to suspect that the detainee is criminally implicated in the activity under investigation”.

This authority applies only to people who police can articulate may actually be involved in a specific crime being investigated.  It requires powers of observation and the need to discern and articulate an actual crime.  This takes away the arbitrariness and overbroadness of the Public Works Protection Act, which seems to be what the public has a problem with.  I do not think that being limited to detaining people who may be involved in a crime would have significantly hampered the ability of the police to provide security at the G20.  After all, who were they there to deal with but people committing crimes?

This authority alone may not have been sufficient, but it was not the only one in the police officer’s arsenal.

The second authority is found in the statutory powers of arrest of police officers in the Criminal Code.  Section 495(1) states that a peace officer may arrest without warrant “a person who has committed an indictable offence or who, on reasonable grounds, he believes has committed or is about to commit an indictable offence”.

The inclusion of “is about to commit an indictable offence” broadens the arrest authority of the police powers to the point of making them quite appropriate for the G20.  Under this authority, officers who were able to articulate that person approaching or entering a restricted zone (or a person anywhere else in the city for that matter) was about to commit an indictable offence (i.e. mischief, etc), could simply arrest them for that anticipated crime.  Like investigative detention, this authority would also have required officers to have display the ability to discern and articulate a specific offence in order to arrest.  But again, what need is there for police to arrest those who are not committing or about to commit a criminal offence?  If officers had been able to articulate what crime (committed or anticipated) each person at the G20 was arrested for, I doubt there would have been such criticism of their actions.

Certainly it is not always easy, or even possible, to classify a person’s actions as about to lead to a specific criminal offence, and it is for that reason that I turn to the next authority.

The third in the trilogy of authorities I suggest could have usurped the need for the Public Works Protection Act is the statutory arrest authority for Breach of the Peace. Section 31 of the Criminal Code states that a peace officer can arrest “any person whom he finds committing the breach of the peace or who, on reasonable grounds, he believes is about to join in or renew the breach of the peace”.

The wording here makes this particular authority particularly appropriate to the G20, especially when used in conjunction with the other authorities police have.  “Breach of the Peace” not being clearly defined, there is significant room for discretion on the part of the officer to arrest “unruly” people who appear to be “breaching the peace” or who may be about to “breach the peace”.

This authority appears to approach the broadness of the Public Works Protection Act.  A person only has to look like they are about to act in an “unruly” manner to be arrested under this authority.  The majority of arrests at the G20 were, in fact, under this authority, but the big difference between this authority and the Public Works Protection Act is that Breach of the Peace still requires some ability, on the part of the officer, to articulate why he believed a breach was occurring or about to occur.

Certainly arresting on a Breach of the Peace is more difficult for police than exercising the arbitrary power to arrest under the Public Works Protection Act for simply being in the wrong place.  However, it is, arguably, easier to justify the intrusion on people’s Charter rights with a Breach of the Peace arrest than through the Public Works Protection Act.

Summary

The police have extensive authority under common law and statute to stop, detain, arrest, and search people.  (All three of the authorities I have cited have powers of search subject to detention or arrest.)  However, these three authorities, in fact almost all police authorities, other than the Public Works Protection Act, require the use of discretion and articulation in their application.  Certainly, this makes the job of the police more difficult and time consuming, but as a province and as a nation, we are not known for trading our civil liberties for convenience or efficiency in law enforcement and the maintenance of public order, nor should we be.

Based on my own experience as a police officer, I believe that the use of the authorities I have cited above, as well as all the other powers at the police officer’s disposal, would have allowed police to perform their duties adequately at the G20, without the need for the Public Works Protection Act.

The exercise of authority with discretion and articulation is far less likely to raise the ire of the public than the arbitrariness and overbroadness of the authorities contained in the Public Works Protection Act.  The courts in this country have tended to rule in favour of the need for proper discretion and articulation in the exercise of police powers and have avoided lending support to blanket authorities.  Arbitrary and overbroad authorities which are used to infringe on a person’s Charter rights are inconsistent with the core values and principles of fundamental justice in this country.

On these principled reasons, I would submit that the Public Works Protection Act was not appropriate for the G20.

1) R. v. Mann, 2004 SCC 52, [2004] 3 S.C.R. 59
2) R. v. Simpson, [1993] O.J. No. 308, 12 O.R. (3d) 182

Failing to Produce Insurance Card

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Failing to Produce Insurance Card

Don’t I have 24 hours to show it to someone at the police station?

I used to get asked this question all the time:  “I got a ticket for failing to produce my insurance card, don’t I have 24 hours to show up with it at the police station and they’ll throw the ticket out?”  Simon says NO!

I suspect this myth was started by kindhearted police officers who gave people breaks and told them that if they brought their insurance card in within 24 hours they wouldn’t process the ticket.  That was very nice of them to be sure, but that is entirely within their discretion to do and, in my experience, it is not common practice these days.

The Compulsory Automobile Insurance Act section 3(1) states that, “an operator of a motor vehicle on a highway shall have in the motor vehicle at all times (a) an insurance card for the motor vehicle; or (b) an insurance card evidencing that the operator is insured under a contract of automobile insurance.”

There is nothing in the rest of this Act, or elsewhere in law, that supports the 24 hour myth.

Usually officers submit their tickets at the end of their shift and after that it is out of their hands.  Once processed by administrative staff and sent off to the courts, they couldn’t recall it or withdraw it if they wanted to.

So if you get a $65 ticket for failing to produce your insurance card, don’t expect to be given 24 hours to produce it.  If you are given that opportunity, take it before the officer changes their mind!

Simon Borys

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Do Your Driving Convictions Really Disappear After 3 Years?

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Do Your Driving Convictions Really Disappear After 3 Years?

Records of Convictions for Provincial Charges in Ontario

Do your driving convictions really disappear after 3 years? Simon says, “No!” Keep reading to find out more about how the government keeps provincial offence records and what happens to them after three years.

Background Information on Provincial Offence Records

First some background information on provincial records. The Ministry of the Attorney General in Ontario keeps records of individuals’ convictions for all provincial charges, the most common Acts being the Highway Traffic Act (HTA), the Compulsory Automobile Insurance Act (CAIA), and the Liquor Licence Act (LLA). However these records are kept on an antiquated system, known as ICON, and are not easily searchable by police officers in the course of their regular duties. These records are primarily for the courts to maintain and use. ICON records are kept longer than three years.

This means that police officers aren’t likely to know about your underage drinking or public intoxication tickets when they run your name, unless you are dealing with the service that issued you the ticket, then they will probably have record of it on their own computer system.

MTO Records of HTA and CAIA Charges

The Ministry of Transportation (MTO) also keeps a records system, known as PARIS (Plate and Registration Information System). PARIS is accessed through the CPIC (Canadian Police Information Center) software, which is readily available to all police officers.

PARIS keeps track of individuals through their driver’s licence number and only deals with driving related provincial offences, namely Highway Traffic Act and Compulsory Automobile Insurance Act charges. It also keeps records of any driver’s licence suspensions, regardless of what they were from (i.e. medical, unpaid fines, racing, criminal conviction, etc). The PARIS record is what people are referring to when they speak of their “driving record”.

When a police officer runs (checks) your driver’s licence number, they will see your licence status and your convictions on PARIS, as well as any points you have accumulated from those convictions. Police services in Ontario (with the exception of the OPP and MTO enforcement officers) only have access on PARIS to the last three years worth of convictions and demerit points (although points actually regenerate after only two years).

The Three Year Myth

The fact that most officers can only see the last three years worth of convictions, coupled with the fact that insurance companies usually only ask about your last three years, has led to the myth that driving convictions are wiped off your record after three years. This is not the case! PARIS keeps records of your convictions indefinitely, it’s just that most officers can’t see them. The OPP and the MTO, however, can. So remember this the next time you are asked if you’ve had any tickets in the past!

Simon Borys