“Undemocratic Parking Ticket Administrative Monetary Penalty”

As the above link says, Mississauga is moving parking ticket disputes out of court to be "adjudicated" by city employees. Essentially instead of having one's day in court before an impartial justice, the city becomes judge, jury and executioner. How is this fair? What does one have to do to appeal this and get it oveturned(appeal to the SCC?).

It's happenining in other towns as well as the link below shows:

How is this even constitutional when the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms clearly states in Section 11(d):

"Any person charged with an offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law in a FAIR and public hearing by an INDEPENDENT and IMPARTIAL tribunal"

Somehow I don't think an employee appointed and accountable to the City is fair, independent and impartial.

Go transit also uses the AMP system for parking tickets issued on their property as well as fair evasion tickets. AMPS are also used at the Federal level for various violations of the Customs Act and Food Inspection regulations among other things. This seems to be a growing trend for dealing with non-criminal violations that do not involve jail time. I've never had to argue a fine issued under this system so I've never seen the arbitration process first hand, but I do agree that having to appeal an AMP to a person working for the entity that issued the fine in the first place seems questionable.

I'm not a fan of this arbitration process, it's already silently being used in major GTA cities: Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Burlington, Oshawa. With the Provincial Offences Act if you received a parking ticket, there would be a 'Notice of Impending Conviction Notice' sent to your address.

With the Municipal Act's AMP system there is no mechanism to trigger that notice. Drivers who've had their parking tickets blown off their windshield are getting conviction letters in the mail with administrative fees that are sometimes higher than the original fine.

Toronto will be introducing an Administrative Monetary Penalty system for parking tickets starting on August 28th. The bylaw enabling this was quietly passed back in March. This means that you will no longer be able to argue a Toronto parking ticket in Provincial Offences Court, but instead will have to make your case to a city appointed arbitrator. Here is the notice on there website describing how the system will work and a copy of the By-law. It looks pretty similar to the other AMP systems described in this thread.

City Website: https://www1.toronto.ca/wps/portal/cont ... d60f89RCRD

Copy of the Bylaw: http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/bylaws/2017/law0799.pdf

So the city charges you, then the city judges you, and the city benefits financially from convictions.

Yep, totally no problems with that system whatsoever.

The system is nothing but a money grab.

And so the best way to beat the system is to not break the law...and that is clearly the primary intent of the system...win win!

FyreStorm wrote:And so the best way to beat the system is to not break the law...and that is clearly the primary intent of the system...win win!

There is much more to it than that. Look at what's going on in the US where towns have been forbidden from giving tickets as a whole because of corruption. Look at other cases where the chiefs say go and get people because we need money, so they're out there harassing people who walk with a limp and drivers who are picking their nose. I'm afraid that there is much to tickets than just enforcing the law, almost everywhere it has been used as a revenue tool and with bad intent. It is also no coincidence that every municipality jumped on this about the same time. Just like those smart meters, all of a sudden the entire world went from rejecting it to pushing it on residents, from Australia to Austria. When you see such a coordinated effort it is usually someone pulling the strings somewhere. In Toronto it looks like Tory who has waged a war on drivers and cars since the day he took office, he went right in to heavy handed ticketing and towing for something that wasn't a big problem to begin with and then he back tracked right after that on his toll highway promise and not only changed his mind on tolls but vigorously started an effort to push them on the residents. It's hard to believe that he changed his mind like that, his full plan all along was a surveillance system for the Toronto highways. Thankfully the rotten wynne govt couldn't afford to take this hit and she rejected his plea for the law change. I would guess the toronto AMP system is the same thing, taking rights away from people and generating revenue for the city. This should scare people because the ticketers are already commission based and don't exactly have the best track record.