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In the early hours of Wednesday morning, while the city was under siege from a winter storm, a bylaw officer pulled over on Holland Avenue to inspect a snow-clearing crew in a small, commercial parking lot.

It was near 3 a.m.

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The owner of the company, Kevin Joly, was taken aback by the urgent flashing lights on a high-end SUV, the U-turn stopping in the middle of the night, as if this was some kind of emergency. A few minutes later, after a testy exchange, Joly was handed a ticket for $260. The offence? The company snowblower was not carrying a numbered licence plate issued by the city.

Photo by Tony Caldwell / Postmedia

Licence a snowblower? Joly, 31, said he was told that any device that was used to move snow for profit must be licensed by the City of Ottawa.

“What about my shovel?” he asked, quite logically.

Turns out this is precisely how the bylaw is written. “Machinery and vehicles operated by those (licensed) companies are each required to have an orange snow plow contractor plate affixed to it,” says a response from Tania McCumber, a program manager in the city’s licensing compliance unit.