Should parking fines depend on how much your car costs? One councillor is asking

As the City of Ottawa looks to take over responsibility for parking ticket disputes next year, one councillor wants to look at a sliding scale of penalties that would give low-income drivers a break.

Capital ward Coun. Shawn Menard is asking city staff to examine options, like gearing fines to the driver's income or the value of their vehicle.

"The person that drives the Ferrari and parks at Lansdowne, they may be much more able to afford a parking ticket or may even take that on just knowing they might get a parking ticket there, than someone who's going to a protest for basic income," he said.

"We've had people in our office very upset and crying about going to a basic income protest and getting a ticket there. Their ability to pay was much less than that person in the Ferrari."

He made the proposal just after council's finance and corporate services committee voted in favour of a new penalty system that would take parking ticket challenges out of the courts.

City staff said the current system is "jammed up," and replacing justices of the peace with council-appointed adjudicators will mean faster disputes for residents. Menard also saw it as a chance to experiment.

He said the sliding-scale model is already used for speeding infractions in Finland. While basing fines on income could require co-operation with federal bodies, like the Canada Revenue Agency, Menard thinks there might be alternatives.

"There's other proxies, the blue book values of vehicles for example, that could be looked into," he said. "That's why we're asking staff to explore the options."

Capital ward Coun. Shawn Menard submitted an inquiry to staff asking them to review the possibility of a sliding scale for parking fines. (Michel Aspirot/CBC)

Menard said his idea isn't meant to hike maximum fines for higher earners, but would be more likely to cut fines for people who can't afford them.

"If somebody has substantially lower income, say one tenth of what that other person makes, they might pay one tenth of that fine, for example," he said.

"There are different models out there that would allow that person to still feel, I guess, a punishment or a penalty for breaking a rule but still respect the fact that they might not be able to participate as much."

He said his inquiry is focused on parking infractions because they're set by the city, while speeding fines are set by the province.

Questions of fairness, conflict of interest

Menard said the issue seems relevant now, as councillors debate the new penalty regime.

While the committee voted in favour on Tuesday, it will still have to pass at council next week.

The city's chief financial officer Cyril Rodgers said 95 per cent of infractions that go through provincial offences court are speeding camera tickets, red light camera tickets or parking offences.

He's proposing to bring all three in house.

Parking would come first, in the first half of next year, with speeding and red light ticket challenges to follow a few months later. Rodgers said the move would help break the logjam caused by a shortage of justices of the peace.

Instead, the new penalty system would allow residents to dispute tickets in writing to a city employee known as a screening officer, who could reduce or cancel the ticket, or grant an extension.

If drivers still aren't satisfied, they could take the matter in person or virtually to a hearing officer, who would be appointed directly by council and meant to be independent of the city bureaucracy.

Rodgers said that would allow disputes to be heard faster, in a matter of "weeks or months."

But councillors had lots of questions over whether the new system would be fair and free of political influence.

Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper expressed concerns about possible political interference when bringing the new penalty system in house. (Michel Aspirot/CBC)

Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper wondered whether there would be any "guardrails" to prevent council from directing a hearing officer to cancel tickets for political reasons.

"I do like the fact that council can't tell justices of the peace what to do, so we have that strict separation of powers that underlies western liberal democracy," he said. "I would like some comfort that we are prevented from getting involved."

A city lawyer said his preliminary view is that council would potentially run afoul of conflict of interest policies if it intervened in the work of independent adjudicators.

The new system would also come with a conflict of interest policy for all staff involved in the program.

The policy would prevent officers from hearing challenges from relatives or business associates, for example.

Orléans East-Cumberland Coun. Matt Luloff was the only councillor on finance committee to vote against the new system. He said he also favours a faster and more efficient system, but wasn't happy to hear that the decisions of hearing officers would be final, with no chance to appeal further to a court.

"I really don't want to make this decision at the expense of fairness and the ability for people to be able to have their case heard before a provincial justice of the peace," Luloff said.