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Border Adventures
Tread very lightly in the land of Poutine
If you visit Quebec and receive any kind of traffic fine, including a parking ticket, make sure that you pay it. Since 2005, a rather draconian law has been adopted to deal with offenders. Failure to pay a ticket results in the revocation of driving privileges in Quebec. This applies also to non residents and it doesn't matter when the offense occured. Unlike the rest of North America, there is no statute of limitations in Quebec. "The only way you can ever get removed from our database is to produce a death certificate," says a court official with the Palais de Justice in Longueuil, a suburb of Montreal.
Offenders of the above-mentioned law are liable to a $430 fine and on the spot confiscation of their vehicle. As you might surmise, the penalties pose a major problem for American tourists who may have "forgotten" to pay a parking ticket on a previous visit , perhaps in the heady days of youth.
If such misfortune befalls you, be prepared to come up with a lot of cash on the spot. You might need as much as $1,000 for paying the fine at the local police station and paying the towing company that was hired to carry off your vehicle. You may even be left by the roadside and if you can't speak French, you may not even realize the full import of what has happened to you. In addition you will need your charge card to pay off the original ticket which may have tripled or quadrupled in cost since the date of issue. Most Quebec municipal courts accept charge cards for paying fines. Like in the US, traffic offenses are a provincial jurisdication in Canada. As such, another province, like neighboring Ontario, cannot collect on an outstanding Quebec traffic ticket nor enforce an unpaid fine. The Napoleonic Code does not extend to the rest of Canada.
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An unpaid traffic ticket is not grounds for the denial of entry to Quebec and, if you aren't driving, you are not breaking the law. But, according to the Palais de Justice official the vehicle you are riding in could be impounded if your name is on its registration and your driver is stopped. By the way, a DWI conviction anywhere in the United States will result in the denial of entry to Canada. If you try to cover this up and are caught in a police check, you will be automatically jailed and then officially deported.
Timothy Palmer-Benson
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