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Overall the ICS fleet is home to three of the top 10 “scoffs” in Toronto, said Toronto Police’s Brian Moniz, operations supervisor for parking enforcement west. Another ICS delivery van with Alberta plates has racked up 468 tickets worth $28,000, he said.

Courier with Alberta plates delivering in Toronto???One of the highest offenders with 356 unpaid fines@torontopolice pic.twitter.com/mpxbcbtF4L — Brian Moniz (@TPS_Brian) February 23, 2015

“I don’t know why a vehicle that is operating in Ontario would have Alberta plates if it wasn’t to flout the law and scoff at the law,” said Mr. Moniz, who has spearheaded a crackdown on these vehicles in the past week. He said he has also seen UPS trucks around downtown Toronto sporting exotically coloured Manitoba licence plates.

TransForce insists that the multinational company works to comply with city parking while still serving its customers. “Over the past five years ICS has paid $600,000 in parking fines in Toronto,” Rick Leckner, a TransForce spokesman, said Tuesday. “People understandably feel that we are the bad guys, but we are not the bad guys. We are trying to deliver the packages. ”

He declined to get into details about why ICS had been using Alberta plates in a city 2,700 kilometres, and three provinces east, of Wild Rose Country. “They made a business decision to do this,” was all he would say. “We’ve got lots of trucks and that’s just the way it was.” The Alberta-plated trucks have been relocated to farther-flung routes in the GTA, he said.

Mr. Leckner said that when TransForce head office learned of the fines owed by its couriers in Toronto, it took steps to settle the debt. “We had no idea the that the Alberta [licence plate] file was building up, as implausible as this may sound,” he said. “The perception is poor. There is no question about it … Our revenue is north of $4 billion. We want to be and need to be very well behaved. We have shareholders. The key people in this organization care. Because of operational matters we got caught up in this situation and we are dealing with it.”