City of Toronto owed over $420M in provincial and city fines
Beverly Romeo-Beehler, Toronto’s auditor general has made some new calculations concerning the amount of money that is owed the city in “unpaid provincial offences fines” CBC reports.
Romeo-Beehler knows of “roughly two million cases in default with a total outstanding balance of $577 million as of June 2017.”
Included are those defaulted fines owed to the city or the province, and those that have reached collections agencies. There is more than $90 million floating around in collections and $60 million to be collected by the governments.
Key debts
One company still owes the city $55,000 from a 2015 bylaw offense, while another restaurant owes $36,000 for a public health violation that dates back to 2013.
Repeat offenders also contribute to the growing arrears. One person has 21 driving offenses to their name amounting to $215,000 in provincial debt. This driver has been caught “ignoring a stop sign, failing to yield to traffic, [and] driving without insurance multiple times.”
The City now intends to transform the way it goes about collecting fines from residents who take advantage of the system.
New audit reveals new problems
This most recent audit reviewed all Provincial Offences Act (POA) fines in the GTA, save for those related to parking. The findings have made councillors very concerned.
“There’s people out there that haven’t paid these fines and they’re laughing because they’ve gotten away with it,” Councillor Stephen Holyday said.
Romeo-Beehler singled out the repeat offenders. Her report notes that “three-quarters of all the defaulted fines haven’t been paid in more than five years.”
A small fraction of offenders owe a large proportion of the debt as well—600 accounts owe $50,000 or more; this totals $84 million out of the $420 million outstanding overall.
Opportunity for new strategies
Romeo-Beehler proposes a new centralized city-wide approach with 31 recommendations aimed at putting more power into court services that deal with collections and defaulted fines.
“Those include developing new collection strategies, exploring the use of data modelling to figure out who's most likely to pay or not pay, and asking the province to consider if added sanctions can be slapped on repeat offenders.”
Fred Kaustinen, co-author of the 2011 report on the same issue, says the fines may be unrecoverable and thinks it may be time to explore entirely new options such as remedial training or community service.
“Maybe the fines aren’t the right solution.”