Municipal court suspends 26,000 cases
Municipal court has suspended 26,000 cases because they were getting into unreasonable delays. These are all minor matters – the test case was about someone putting out their recycling at the wrong time – so it doesn’t mean there are a lot of unpunished criminals sauntering around. Basically, there are too many files for the court to keep up.
Ephraim 09:07 on 2020-02-26 Permalink
It’s time to rationalize some of the laws. If you can’t enforce them and can’t prove them, then stop doing them or rethink how we do it.
ant6n 10:32 on 2020-02-26 Permalink
@Epharim – that would probably mean more small things are decided by police offers on the spot without easy recourse.
Ephraim 15:05 on 2020-02-26 Permalink
Pull out the data and start to look. But also start to be realistic about it. It’s hard to make a ticket for putting out the garbage on the wrong day stick… but even if you do, is it worth collecting the fine? The city has to send an inspector, the inspector has to go through the garbage looking for an address, collect the evidence, send a ticket, keep the evidence and be ready to present the evidence in court. And if the fine is maybe $70, does all this cover the cost of all the work? So, do we have a better solution? We can increase the fine to the point of where it actually covers the costs of the system or we can find a solution, like sending the inspector to the house with the warning and the bag in front of the door the first time. Or we could just collect it and ignore the problem. Or we could look to see if this is related to STR? Could we have a central garbage in a neighbourhood where people can drop off in case they are going away, etc. But you solve the problem by being realistic.
It’s like speeding tickets. Even if you told every policeman in Montreal to write speeding tickets all day long, they wouldn’t even dent 1% of those speeding. The speed limit isn’t really a law, it’s a request with random tickets. Now stopping those from speeding in a school zone… important. Stopping those from speeding on the 720, not that important. (And I’ve watched police cars just zoom by on the 720 because no one keeps the 70km/h speed limit.)
PS: well at least you manage to put the right letters together, even if they weren’t in the right order 😀
Kevin 11:21 on 2020-02-27 Permalink
One issue is the lack of judges and court times, and what appears to be deliberate stalling by authorities.
It’s been normal for people trying to challenge parking tickets to get their dates pushed back three times– but only finding out after they’ve already scheduled time off work.
Kate 14:39 on 2020-02-27 Permalink
I’m wondering if either we need to use technology to streamline the process, or if this story is being told now to prepare the ground for using technology that might be intrusive to streamline the process.