This is about more than unfair traffic tickets. The Crown consistently uses thoroughly unscrupulous tactics in the courts to keep this racket going. These include grossly misrepresenting facts, outright lying to judges, engaging in ambush attacks after having previously conceded an issue, usurping judicial powers, and driving wedges between clients and their representatives — just to name a few. They also have a really annoying habit of constantly contradicting their own arguments, which never seems to get them into trouble. To make matters worse, judges, who are supposed to be impartial, routinely grant wins to the Crown in contradiction of established law. Manitoba Public Insurance is 100% complicit in this charade as well, but that’s a whole other article.

This is about a system that has turned against the citizens it claims to protect. In traffic court you are presumed guilty until proven innocent — something any high school student will tell you flies directly in the face of one of the most basic and universal tenets of law. Simply paying a ticket is an admission of guilt. Whatever you are accused of doing by the police is assumed true unless you can prove otherwise, which is extremely difficult to do, even without the roadblocks strategically set up at every turn. The Crown will do everything in its power (and even go beyond it), to discourage you from setting foot in the courts. And if you have the nerve to challenge them anyway, and you can make it past the enticing offers to have your fine reduced by pleading guilty, they will fight dirty. Really dirty. Like, I-can’t-even-believe-I’m-hearing-this-right-now schoolyard level dirty. Especially if you have the gall to appoint a representative who actually knows what they’re talking about, even though the law says you can authorize whoever you want to speak on your behalf, (it’s even printed on the back of every ticket). If the person you appoint happens to be a law student who specializes in this area, they’ll simply twist said law into whatever shape necessary to make the problem go away.

Christian Sweryda has been representing people in traffic court for years, fighting against unfair tickets. The Crown obviously doesn’t like this because holding the perpetrators accountable risks breaking down the entire system. They have been systematically targeting Christian all along, attempting to bully him into relinquishing, but tellingly, it’s not until Christian started actually winning cases that they really put up a fuss. On June 6, 2018, Judicial Justice of the Peace Nettie Cuthbert-Buchanan, kicked Christian out of provincial court on completely illegitimate grounds, in direct violation of our legal right to appoint whoever we wish as representative. (JJP’s, by the way, aren’t required to have any legal training whatsoever, and this one previously worked for 20 years as a clerk in the Crown prosecution office… but somehow that isn’t considered a conflict of interest). They are trying to get rid of Christian because he is a serious (and damn persistent) thorn in their side who has more than enough evidence to bring them down. The right to defend ourselves against a system that revolves around improper incentives and therefore does not have our interests at heart, is quietly being taken away.

The fight has been taken to the Court of Queen’s Bench. The Crown’s latest complaint against Christian is that his interpretation of the legislation takes it further than what it is intended for, and it hinges on the argument that he has represented so many people (allegedly seventeen), that they cannot possibly all be his friends. The fact that the Crown would even use this as an argument is dumbfounding since your representative does not have to be a friend, it can be anyone, and there are no limits imposed on how many times a representative can appear in the court. It’s right there in plain legalese in the Provincial Offences Act, and repeated on the back of every ticket. Despite this, in an attempt to give their claim some teeth, they’ve actually completely fabricated court appearances. Manitoba Prosecution Services has compiled a list of “Confirmed Christian Sweryda Court Appearances”, and the Crown has taken various liberties in order to inflate this list, including implying Christian represented someone when he wasn’t even in the building. Conveniently and rather comically, the client in this instance happens to be my sociology professor’s wife, so we know this is an outright lie because Curtis Pankratz himself is the one who represented his wife in that case, not Christian.

What’s more, according to the Crown’s own objections to Christian’s presence in the courts, Curtis should not have been allowed to act as representative, but they made no attempt to bar him from the proceedings because lacking Christian’s particular expertise at the time, he did not pose a significant enough threat (no offence). In fact, the Crown has a very clear history of specifically barring representatives only after they’ve started having some success. As ludicrous as this sounds, it isn’t the exception but the rule.

And yes, as some of you are no doubt screaming into your devices by now, the POA does state that “a justice may bar a person from appearing as a representative if the justice finds that the person is not able to properly represent or advise the person for whom they appear.” Seems reasonable enough, but ask yourselves this: if Christian or any of the other representatives that have been barred really are unfit, why would the Crown have to go to such crazy lengths trying to discredit them?

Removing representatives who actually stand a chance of winning cases is definitely not in the public interest, but the Crown and city officials have been getting away with defending Manitoba’s fraudulent traffic enforcement system using absurd antics like these for years. As mentioned above, they’ve even gone so far as to suggest that speeding isn’t a major safety concern, which is in complete discordance with the familiar refrain of every single speeding-related PR campaign ever. MPI even warns that speed increases stopping distance. But as we know, that doesn’t matter when it comes to setting amber light duration.

A screenshot from part of WPS’s 2011 “Just Slow Down” campaign. The audacity of tugging at our heartstrings and laying on the guilt about speeding, when officials know full well that our city’s traffic engineering and enforcement practices endanger public safety, is particularly unsavoury.

The Court of Queen’s Bench case is critical because if Christian wins, it could topple the entire house of cards. Beyond the consequences for the Crown, it could change the way the entire justice system works in Manitoba, as it would establish that an accused appealing any provincial offence (not just a traffic ticket), can choose anyone to represent them. Despite all the law being overwhelmingly in his favour and the Crown’s position being completely untenable, Christian is expected to lose. Given that the Crown’s office has been engaging in these machinations for years, the ramifications should they lose this case are severe to say the least, many of those involved could even be facing disbarment. The only reason they’ve escaped scrutiny for this long is that no one has ever challenged them to this extent, as the system makes it almost impossible.

Luckily, if the QB case is lost, the issue will be taken even higher to the Court of Appeal, where in theory, there should be fewer conflicts of interest favouring the Crown because it’s further away from the money, so to speak (Manitoba makes millions on traffic tickets). Ironically, by refusing to allow Christian to continue representing accused in traffic court and forcing the issue to a higher one, the Crown has risked complete ruin by inadvertently putting the spotlight on these unbelievable tactics — the extent and prevalence of which has been enough to surprise even a sociology professor, which is saying something.

Christian is finally making some headway, and media are starting to take notice. A lot of people are visibly and rightfully upset, including a growing number of students and faculty from the University of Manitoba School of Law, and every class of 50+ university students Christian speaks to. But more public awareness and support is sorely needed. On February 12th, 2019, Curtis Pankratz read his students a letter he filed with The Law Society of Manitoba regarding the misrepresentation of his wife’s traffic case by Manitoba Prosecution Services. Afterwards, he made a very compelling plea for us to help defend our legal rights by telling our friends and family about what’s going on, sharing on social media, and generally making a stink. I think it’s the least we can do.

This isn’t just about unfair traffic tickets, but we really, really love to complain about them. It would be remiss of us not to jump at the chance to do something about it. And if we’re loud enough, we just might end up holding our judicial system accountable for its reprehensible actions against the very people it is supposed to serve (that’s you). So please, if you’ve read this far, do yourself a solid and take another minute to share this with as many people as you can. At the very least, you’ll be doing a public service by spreading the word that Winnipeggers aren’t all terrible drivers… it’s engineered.

Case in point: this road sign is instructing people to drive into oncoming traffic.