Municipal government workers in Ottawa are still not expected to pay traffic tickets they receive from the city’s new photo radar system. .“Taxpayers should be outraged by this double standard,” said Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) Ontario director Jay Goldberg in a Monday blog post. .“If taxpayers are going to be on the hook for radar tickets, it’s only fair for city employees to be as well.”.Records obtained by the CTF show 338 photo radar and red-light camera tickets were handed out to vehicles in the City of Ottawa fleet from September 2021 to May 2022. At least 71 of those tickets were for vehicles not included in the police, transit, or paramedic services. .The blog post said the combined cost of those tickets was $12,481. None of the employees who were driving those vehicles paid for the ticket fine they received..Records obtained by the CTF through access to information and privacy requests in April reveal 989 photo radar and red-light camera tickets were given out to City of Ottawa vehicles from January 2019 to August 2021. .At least 159 of the tickets were for vehicles in the city fleet, not including those used by police, transit services, and paramedics. The combined cost was a little more than $37,000. .“Charges laid under the red-light camera and/or photo radar provisions of the Highway Traffic Act are owner liability offences, with the result being the City of Ottawa, as owner of the vehicle, is legally responsible for payment of the fine,” said City of Ottawa solicitor David White. .Ottawa taxpayers do not receive this benefit and have to pay their tickets. .Ottawa’s policy is different from the one in Toronto, where the city pays tickets and works to recover costs. Edmonton had a similar approach until 2021, but it changed when labour arbitration decisions forced the city to pay for employees’ photo radar tickets..Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson said city employees should be paying their tickets..“If we can identify them as being in that vehicle at that time, they should be paying the fine, not the taxpayers," said Watson. .City employees said the city could not take Toronto’s approach because a labour arbitration decision found this policy to be “unreasonable” and that employees should be allowed to fight the charges. .“In light of the arbitration decision, staff at the City of Toronto have not yet made a determination as to the future of the policy,” said the City of Ottawa..“Staff do not recommend the adoption of the City of Toronto policy.”.Goldberg said Ottawa politicians need to step up and do their jobs. .“Politicians, not government bureaucrats, were elected to make policy decisions and represent taxpayers,” he said. .“If municipal employees are trying to make special rules for themselves, Ottawa’s elected officials need to put an end to it.”
