OHTA.ca

Long story short, my boyfriend received a phone call from a police officer back in february notifying him that his license was under suspension. To this day he has not received any formal notice in the mail or been served anything officially in person. What does this mean? If he is now pulled over for some reason, will they give him a formal notice of suspension or will they charge him for driving with a suspended license? And if they do charge him, can he argue that he was not formally notified?

There is no requirement that a person be issued a personal notice of suspension, either by phone or physically by an officer. The MTO sends a letter to the address on the licence automatically after it becomes suspended and for the purposes of being charged with driving under suspension, you are deemed to be served notice of the suspension via the letter 7 days after it is sent out.

That being said, there is a system in place with Ontario Suspension Control to keep track of personal suspension notifications. A personal notice is where you have been given a paper notice, usually on a Provincial Offence Notice or Suspension Notice Form, by a police officer. The purpose of this system is to ensure that people were aware that their licence is suspended, since not everybody receives the letter. This is just a courtesy though, and a person can be charged after the 7 day period, regardless of whether they have received personal notice. It would be up to the officer's discretion.

In my experience, officers don't usually call people and tell them that their licence is suspended. He might want to look into that and confirm that it actually is. If it is, he should just take care of it instead of worrying about whether he will get charged if he's caught driving

It was really strange that the officer called him actually. And it was the same officer that he had filed a complaint against for pulling him out of an carwash line up, photocopying his id without his permission, leaving a piece of his id in the photocopier of the esso and still not charging him with anything. Weeks later we get a phone call saying his license is suspended... very bizarre.

And immediately when the officer did call him he went and got a print out from the MTO saying that he was fully licensed. However, we recently tried crossing the boarder and on our way back through the border patrol informed us that his license was showing up as suspended... so again we went to the MTO office, and again they were saying he was licensed.

It looks like there has been a discrepancy between the two systems but as he's tried to figure out what is going on, they have now combined both records... but he only found this out AFTER completing and passing his G test yesterday when he went to upgrade his license. (Which again does not make sense as you cannot do the test if your license is suspended!) And regardless, he still has not received anything in the mail notifying him of the suspension. The whole situation just seems so odd.

He is getting to the bottom of it, but it's going to take time and I'm just trying to figure out what will happen if he is pulled over in the next little while as this is being cleared up... until he receives anything in the mail how can he be charged with driving suspended?

Ontario HTA section 52

Deemed date of service

(2) Notice sent by registered mail under clause (1) (a) or by mail under clause (1) (b) shall be deemed to have been given on the seventh day after the mailing unless the person to whom the notice is sent establishes that he or she did not, acting in good faith, through absence, accident, illness or other cause beyond his or her control, receive the notice. 2000, c. 26,

Basically a notice is sent out and 7 days after it is sent it is deemed served.

OPS

bd88 wrote:He is getting to the bottom of it, but it's going to take time and I'm just trying to figure out what will happen if he is pulled over in the next little while as this is being cleared up... until he receives anything in the mail how can he be charged with driving suspended?

In order to be suspended, you have to be either convicted of something that would lead to a suspension, be charged with something with an administrative suspension (e.g. stunt driving) or something like that. What was he charged with? Did he have any unpaid tickets?