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“To other people $50,000 may not sound like a lot, but it was paying the bills and I was living a comfortable life,” Webber says. “Because my job depended on my driver’s licence and my health, that went down the tubes. I ended up losing the job.”

On his lawyer’s advice, he didn’t step foot in Alberta for more than a decade for fear he would be thrown in jail. A father of four girls, he missed one daughter’s wedding and the birth of his first grandchild, not to mention two high-school graduations. The couple were unable to afford camp or sports fees for their son, and they certainly had no money for college or university.

They have exhausted all avenues — they even wrote the Prime Minister—with their complaint and fight for compensation. They also want reassurance that the RCMP will institute a policy that ensures more rigorous identity checks.

“I want the RCMP to at least do due diligence to say, ‘Yes the guy standing in front of me is the guy he says he is,’” says Webber.

They have asked the Access Pro Bono Society of British Columbia to take a look at their case, and consulted an Edmonton lawyer who handles many complaints against police. He advised Webber it would cost about $10,000 to file the paperwork alone, and the case could drag on and cost as much as $100,000.

This is no different from someone being thrown in jail who is completely innocent for 10 years of their life. We were in jail in our head Deborah Baillie

Webber still has the GoFundMe page he set up last year to try to raise money for a lawyer to fight the civil judgment. Now that the lawsuit against him has been dismissed, he’s leaving the account open in the hope he can raise enough to fight for compensation. Until then, he and Baillie are still, close to 12 years after the accident, trying to make ends meet.