The number of Canadians who’ve received tickets or been charged as part of COVID-19 enforcement has topped 4,500, per a new report from Policing the Pandemic.
The bill? $5.8 million and counting.
“We were shocked,” said Alex Luscombe, a PhD student in criminology at the University of Toronto and co-creator of Policing the Pandemic, a mapping project launched a month ago to track the ways in which COVID-19 orders are being enforced nationwide.
“It’s a hell of a lot of money to try to extract from people that are under financial distress right now.”
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Since early April, physical-distancing enforcement blitzes have prompted people to go public with stories of receiving tickets for playing basketball, standing in a park or walking their dogs. Academics, criminologists and human rights organizations have sounded the alarm over the impact on people’s rights and freedoms while questioning whether fines actually serve as a deterrent.
And while Luscombe says some of the early concerns over Ontario- and Quebec-style enforcement being adopted by other provinces hasn’t materialized, the fact that the total fine tally is approaching $6 million is staggering.
“It’s clearly adding up,” Luscombe says. “At a time when people are being laid off, struggling to make rent and buy groceries and need to be doing everything they can to prepare to survive this indefinitely, I don’t see how adding a $900 or $2,000 fine is going to help.”
2:04 COVID-19: Lethbridge police say ‘no tickets yet,’ opt for warnings
COVID-19: Lethbridge police say ‘no tickets yet,’ opt for warnings
Quebec leads the way so far, with more than 3,000 fines, per the report. Ontario comes second with 930 reported fines, followed by Nova Scotia with 516 and Alberta with 44.
A government spokesperson for Quebec acknowledged but did not immediately respond to questions about its enforcement strategies, including questions about how it determined the cost of coronavirus-related fines.
Stephen Warner, press secretary for Ontario Solicitor General Sylvia Jones, said: “Local enforcement personnel are encouraged to exercise discretion and use a graduated approach when enforcing provincial emergency orders.”
Warner did not respond to a question about the rationale for fining people at a time when many are applying in record numbers for federal support to pay their bills, except to say the decision was based on the recommendation of the chief medical officer of health to declare a provincial emergency.
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When asked by Global News how he reconciles federal support for cash-strapped Canadians with provinces doling out tickets, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not answer.
Instead, he reiterated the importance of social distancing and staying home while noting that “different jurisdictions have different, more specific rules suitable for their own jurisdictions.”
2:23 Coronavirus outbreak: Trudeau leaving concerns about COVID-19 fines, arrests up to the provinces
Coronavirus outbreak: Trudeau leaving concerns about COVID-19 fines, arrests up to the provinces
The fines are “absurdly disproportionate to the alleged offence,” says Michael Bryant, executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA).
And if $5.8 million seems high, Bryant says the total figure is likely even higher, but it’s hard to know exactly because not all governments and police departments are disclosing the extent of their enforcement.
The one exception, he says, appears to be Winnipeg, which provides updates online about where in the city officials are warning people and how many people they’re warning every single day.
“The government rightly tells people all the good things it’s doing, but it needs to disclose this information, too,” Bryant says.
“Some will think this is great and should be higher, some like us will think that it’s fundamentally misguided and unconstitutional.”
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In the vacuum left by the lack of information, Bryant says confusion persists.
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Aurora, Ont., in particular, he says, has been continuing to enforce the 15-day window for a person to pay their ticket despite the province saying the typical, non-pandemic deadlines do not currently apply. A spokesperson for the Town of Aurora said “officers are aware of this change in process and it has been re-communicated to them to ensure consistency and compliance.”
Just the fact that cities started ticketing before setting up systems to manage these new types of fines might render them invalid, he says, on the basis that the tickets themselves display out-of-date information about deadlines and procedures for challenging them in court.
“Arguably, all the tickets are invalid, every single one of them.”
It’s not surprising that laws and regulations enacted in a state of emergency are not entirely well thought out, says Vincent Wong, the William C. Graham research associate for the international human rights program at the University of Toronto’s law school.
Nor, he notes, is it surprising to see policing front and centre; it’s par for the course in an emergency.
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“Our immediate response is ‘Well, we need more laws and more policing,’ so many of these powers are rammed through without any kind of consultation, and they’re couched in overbroad and vague terms only dubiously related to public health objectives,” he says.
In the early days of the pandemic, Wong notes, some people were quick to position COVID-19 as the great equalizer, rendering everyone — white or black or Indigenous, rich and poor, housed or homeless — on equal footing.
But they’re not. It’s more accurate to paint the pandemic as “the great revealer,” Wong says.
“It reveals so much about the underbelly of how our society functions,” he says. “The care workers, the cleaners, the people that work in agriculture and who are treated to essentially horrible conditions and horrible pay are the people who have to keep working in order for us to survive.”
4:27 Mental health during the pandemic
Mental health during the pandemic
Yet, he says, enforcement measures are quickly passed with little discussion about how they might cause harm, as people are told “it’s not the time to do intersectional analysis because we are facing an emergency.”
But failing to do so isn’t without repercussions, says Wong, who works closely with Butterfly, a Toronto-based Asian and migrant sex worker support network.
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One woman has been sleeping in her closed shop to better protect her elderly, immunocompromised parents with whom she typically shares a very small apartment.
She’s received five tickets to date for opening her shop (which she hasn’t), Wong says, an example of “how punitive this kind of aggressive law enforcement fine and ticketing regime is for migrant, racialized workers and how these campaigns can actually be counterproductive to the objectives of public health.”
Ultimately, Luscombe says, if ticketing is to persist, government officials and police owe the public an explanation about what their strategy is and what evidence it’s based on.
“People just assume this is going to be effective, and I don’t think that’s good enough,” he says.
“It’s extremely contradictory logic to be trying to help people on the one hand while at the same time causing harm and taking money away from them on the other.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
