Andrew Bird says he only wants to drive on the 407 ETR, not own a section of it.

The 45-year-old engineer technologist had the shock of his life in December when he opened a letter from a collection agency demanding $43,000 for tolls, interest charges and penalties for using the highway over the past decade.

“I should own a part of it for that kind of money,” says Bird, who lives north of Lindsay and made a lot of his 407 trips to Hamilton to visit his mother. “Wouldn’t you have to take up residency in a lane for a year or two to be charged that much?”

He believes he owed $2,000 before the additional charges were applied, and thinks that’s what he should pay because his bill has been in dispute for years. He moved to Alberta in 2007 with the bill unresolved and forgot about it.

Then he returned to Ontario about a year ago, driving with his Alberta plates. Then in December 2013, he went to a ServiceOntario office to register a new vehicle he bought to learn he would have to pay his 407 bill first.

After receiving the first $43,000 bill, he says, a second one arrived revising the total. That one said $39,458.31.

Bird has launched an online petition on change.org (http://chn.ge/19XRKsw) to urge the provincial government to do away with plate denial because, he feels, the province should “not be a collection agency for a private business . . . blocking a person’s ability to register a vehicle because of an alleged outstanding bill owed to a privately owned company is unconstitutional. Stop making the taxpayers of Ontario pay for collection of money owed or allegedly owed to a private business.”

But the province doesn’t have that option under the Highway 407 Act, the legislation that privatized the previously government-owned toll highway. The province is compelled to deny plates to drivers the 407 ETR identifies as owing money.

The 407 ETR needs this power because it has no way to keep drivers who are in arrears off the toll highway, says spokesperson Kevin Sacks.

Bird says he was able to register his new vehicle to his business rather than himself and has now consulted a lawyer.

Sacks said: “The number of accounts that get to be unpaid for a lengthy period of time and grow that large are, of course, very, very small. And so let’s keep that in mind.”

But he did not have specific figures. Sacks said he could not comment on specific cases for privacy reasons.

To illustrate how an unpaid bill can escalate, he said someone who didn’t pay $1,000, 10 years ago, would be expected to pay $10,700 today.

A recent Ontario Court of Appeal decision held that people who have gone through the bankruptcy process should not have to have to pay their 407 bills. Hamilton lawyer David Thompson has launched a class-action lawsuit on behalf of people who went bankrupt, had hefty bills from the 407 ETR and could not renew their driver’s licence stickers because of plate denial.

While preparing the case, Thompson says, he has come to know of “dozens of individuals who complain about enormous amounts owing, said to be composed of significant interest charges.”

Many of the cases are “in the tens of thousands of dollars and in one it was as much as $100,000.”

Kim MacLeod of Grimsby says she doesn’t know what to do about plate denial being applied to her because of a $5,339.11 bill from 407 ETR. Her sticker renewal is coming up in March.

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MacLeod says she thought she was square with the toll road after receiving a bill in February 2013, saying she owed only $20.26. But then on Oct. 29, 2013, she was informed that she owed $5,155.11 for trips taken between May 2008 and January 2009.

She knows she owes some money but cannot believe a bill could escalate so much with interest charges.