

Joshua freeman, CP24.com





If you’re still fighting an old parking ticket, you may be in luck.

The city says it has withdrawn 880,000 unpaid parking tickets because they were taking too long to make their way through the court system, city spokesperson Jackie DeSouza told CP24.

A city lawyer went to court to withdraw the tickets Friday after it was determined that it might cost $23 million – $3 million more than estimated worth of the tickets – to continue trying to collect on them through the court process.

There was also no reasonable prospect of conviction because the tickets, collected between 2002 and 2014, had taken so long to process in the court system.

In a statement released Sunday, the city said it had to cancel the tickets to ensure compliance with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ensures the right to a trial within a reasonable amount of time, historically 12 to 16 months for parking tickets,” the city said in the release. “Withdrawing the tickets is an administrative measure that ensures compliance with the Charter and avoids pursuing tickets that have exceeded the time frame and have no reasonable prospect of conviction.

“The City prioritizes the scheduling of trials in its courtrooms to accommodate more serious charges first. The high volume of parking ticket trial requests made between 2002 and 2014 greatly exceeded courtroom capacity and availability of justices of the peace to hear the cases.”

The city said the number of tickets withdrawn represents less than three per cent of all parking tickets collected over that period.

DeSouza said the city's legal division made the decision to withdraw the tickets frm court, becuase of the large amount of time that has passed since most of them were issued.

Mayor John Tory told CP24 Sunday that he wants the city's auditor to look at the move, as there are a large number of tickets involved that were issued to specific individuals or companies.

He said withdrawing the tickets makes a mockery of the system in place, and reflects poorly on the city.

In its statement, the city said the municipality and the province have taken steps to improve the system for handling tickets, including providing additional court room space and justices of the peace, updating cancellation guidelines, adopting a fixed fine system, implementing higher rush hour parking fines and establishing a habitual offender towing program.

A report on other ways to improve ticketing is expected to come before city council later this year.

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