I got two speeding tickets in Kelowna, B.C., two years ago and never paid them. If I go back to British Columbia in the same car, could I get pulled over for having unpaid tickets? Is there a way to find out if there’s a warrant on my vehicle? I’m considering taking my brother’s truck instead – if he lets me. – Nolan, Grande Prairie, Alta.
Pulling drivers over for unpaid traffic tickets is, well, unwarranted, police said.
“The police do not pull drivers over for unpaid tickets and would not know if someone did not pay a ticket, RCMP Corporal Melissa Jongema, a spokeswoman for B.C. Highway Patrol, said in an e-mail. “In [British Columbia], warrants are not issued for [Motor Vehicle Act] tickets. That is a U.S. thing.”
Most police forces in Canada use automated licence plate recognition (ALPR), where cruiser-mounted infrared cameras snap photos of up to 3,000 plates an hour – catching cars in both directions.
The system checks the plate to see whether it’s on a transportation ministry hit list that includes expired or suspended licences. It also connects to the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) to check plates that are reported stolen or associated with warrants or Amber Alerts.
Unpaid traffic tickets won’t show up in those searches, Jongema said.
“In B.C., vehicles would be pulled over after a plate scan for a variety of reasons, including prohibited driving, no insurance, no driver’s licence … [or] a plate that doesn’t match the vehicle,” Jongema said. The only time you would get a traffic-related warrant in B.C. would be if you had failed to appear in court on prohibited driving charges, “but a speeding ticket will not result in a warrant,” Jongema said.
Other consequences?
So you’re not going to get pulled over for an unpaid speeding ticket. But are there other consequences of not coughing up? That depends.
Most of the province’s collection tools – such as not letting you register your vehicle or renew your driver’s licence until you’ve paid your fines – only apply to drivers with B.C. licences. So they won’t affect your ability to renew plates or a driver’s licence in your home province of Alberta. But if you were to move to B.C., you would have to pay those outstanding tickets before they’d give you plates and a licence there.
That’s true for every province. And that’s not all. Some provinces send unpaid tickets to collection agencies. Most can also deduct unpaid traffic fines from your federal tax refund. The Insurance Corp. of British Columbia (ICBC), the province’s government-run insurer, didn’t immediately answer questions on whether B.C. does this.
While the rules vary by province, police generally won’t pull you over just for an unpaid traffic ticket anywhere in Canada.
However, in Ontario, police can pull you over if your licence was suspended because a court ordered you to pay a traffic fine and you didn’t. In that case, police scanning your plates would see the suspension, Ontario Provincial Police said.
Abstract rules
In most of Canada, some out-of-province tickets still have consequences, whether you pay them or not.
Most provinces and territories signed the Canadian Driver Licence Compact (CDLC), a 1990 agreement to share demerit points and driving records.
Generally, certain tickets, including speeding tickets, that you get in a CDLC province will show up on your record in every other CDLC province.
So, for instance, if you’re an Alberta driver and get a speeding ticket in New Brunswick, it will go on your driver’s abstract back home.
Your insurance company can use that information to increase your rates.
Plus, if you’re from a CDLC-signing province, any demerit points you get in a CDLC province will be added to your licence at home; if you accumulate too many, your licence could be suspended.
But B.C., Quebec and Nunavut didn’t sign the CDLC – although Quebec has its own sharing agreements with Ontario, Maine and New York.
So, if you have a Quebec licence, only Ontario, Maine and New York tickets will show up on your driving record. Likewise, any demerit points that came with the tickets would get added to your Quebec licence.
B.C. tickets won’t show up on your record in any province. Demerit points don’t get shared either.
But even when tickets aren’t shared, they’ll stay in the system of the province where you got them.
So, if you decide to move to B.C., any tickets you got there since June 10, 2019 will show up on your new B.C. licence, ICBC said.
The sharing rules only apply to provincial traffic tickets. Without exception, Criminal Code convictions, including impaired driving, show up on your record everywhere in Canada.
Have a driving question? Send it to globedrive@globeandmail.com and put ‘Driving Concerns’ in your subject line. Emails without the correct subject line may not be answered. Canada’s a big place, so let us know where you are so we can find the answer for your city and province.