Section D- Defaulted Fines Enforcement

Under the Transfer Agreement with MAG, the responsibilities of the City include the collection and enforcement of POA fines for and on behalf of the area. The POA Fines Enforcement area currently has 2 full-time employees.

Efforts to enforce these defaulted fines continue to be aggressive and at the same time very challenging. Enforcement constitutes a highly labour-intensive activity which consumes a lot of resources and time. There are a variety of enforcement tools that are readily available and frequently used by the collection staff in order to encourage payment and/or to legally enforce payment of defaulted fines. Some of these include:

• Selectively adding defaulted fines to the tax roll of sole property owners for collection pursuant to section 441.1 of the Municipal Act.

• Registering Certificates of Default with the civil court having monetary jurisdiction, thereby constituting deemed orders or judgments for enforcement purposes.

• Filing and maintaining wage garnishment proceedings where the employer has been identified and the offender’s employment status has been verified.

• Use of Collection Agencies. In addition to skip tracing and making the usual contacts with debtors, our collection agencies have reported numerous defaulters to the major credit bureaus, thereby impairing the creditworthiness of the offenders.

• Filing and maintaining Writs of Seizure and Sale with sheriff’s offices, thereby erecting judicial liens against present and future proprietary interests.

• Driver’s License suspensions and plate denials under various statutes and regulations

• Intercepting indemnity deposits with permit-issuing City departments, by redirecting the indemnity refunds to POA where the indemnitors have defaulted fines

• Exercise of prosecutorial discretion to encourage defendants presenting themselves with fresh charges, to finally honour monetary sentences previously imposed by the POA Court.

Although not frequently used due to operational challenges and privacy legislation, there are other enforcement tools that can be applied to ensure collection efforts are maximized:

• Examinations-in-Aid of Execution, whereby judgment debtors may be examined in depth as to their abilities and means to make good their monetary obligations including being compelled to fully disclose their assets, liabilities, sources of income, bank accounts, RRSP’s etc.
• Contempt Hearings where debtors have refused or neglected to attend on examinations-in-aid.
• Garnishment proceedings whereby bank accounts, rentals from tenants, RRSP’s etc. are attached as information and used for enforcement.
• Monitoring of death notices in the hopes of collecting from estates
• Encouraging revocation of CVOR certificates in liaison with the Ministry of Transportation, respecting businesses making use of commercial motor vehicles which operations perennially default on fines.