It's come to this -- fighting a ticket will mean a day's pay |
Night court will be in session tonight at Old City Hall, arguably the last waypoint for justice for the working stiff, and the court will sit again on Thursday evening.
Then it will be lights out.
Officially, night court does not end until July 1 but since it sits only two days a week -- Tuesdays and Thursdays -- and July 1 is Canada Day this Thursday will be it.
Then anyone wishing to fight a parking ticket or a Provincial Offences Act (POA) charge such as speeding will have to book a day off work to argue the case at Old City Hall's weekday sessions.
There'll be no other option.
For many, the principle of fighting a questionable charge will now have to be weighed against losing a day's pay to challenge it in day court.
The timeline of night court's demise, with the story hitting the headlines here in May, was learned from a letter obtained by the Sun to justices of the peace -- the arbiters of night court -- from Associate Chief Justice John Andrew Payne, co-ordinator of JPs for the Ontario Court of Justice.
What the letter showed was that night court had been on the chopping block for months but, because of scheduling complications, its demise kept getting extended.
When Thursday's night court session draws to a close, however, undoubtedly after hearing its usual average of 200 cases, all will come to an end.
The working public should be outraged.
The bureaucratic explanation for night court's dismissal came via an e-mail from Tara Dier, executive co-ordinator for the Office of the Chief Justice.
"Provincial Offences Act night courts in downtown Toronto are the only regularly scheduled night court of any type in the province," she wrote. "The decision has been made to terminate them as of July 1, 2008, to make the best use of judicial and court resources.
"Two new POA first ap -pearance courts, which are able to handle a large number of attendances by the public, have been initiated on Saturdays to ensure public access."
Despite Dier's implied as -surance of unfettered "public access," the initiation of a Saturday court will not fill the bill. Saturday court, in fact, will only accept guilty pleas or those pleas known as "guilty with an explanation" which, on occasion, can get speeds reduced and fines lessened.
CASH COWS FOR CITY
Pleas of "not guilty" will not be allowed.
"Public access," despite the comments from the chief justice's office, will certainly be marginalized when night court shuts down and the only option to fight a charge is to take a day off work.
Parking tickets and POA charges are cash cows, after all, so making it easy to fight them is not profit-productive.
Not that city hall has ever made it easy.
There has never been a ca -shier's kiosk at Old City Hall, meaning fines cannot be conveniently paid. And should you attempt to go directly to Metro Hall to pay the fine, the computers there will have no record of your conviction, or your fine, for at least three working days.
When it comes to parking tickets, those who choose the Trial Option cannot set a trial date by mail. Instead they must personally attend one of four venues -- Metro Hall, North York Civic Centre, York Civic Centre, or Parking Tags Operations East on Markham Rd. -- within 15 days. None is open past 6 p.m.
According to one report over the weekend, there are thousands who have already discovered that the best way to avoid paying a parking ticket is to so burden the court with trial requests that their case gets buried.
Since 2006, for example, some 250,000 requests for trials pertaining to a parking ticket have reportedly been submitted, but only 4,300 trial dates were ever issued.
This year, some 37,000 trials for $30 parking tickets have already been requested but, according to the report, not a single court date has yet been assigned.
When the lights go out in night court in about 72 hours, however, the last chance the average worker has to fight a one-sided system also goes out the window.
Lights out; game over.
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