Does my IRP apply in Ontario?

Say you’re a resident of Ontario, and while on vacation in British Columbia you get pulled over by the police and are handed an IRP. During the duration of your trip, you will not be allowed to drive, but what happens when you return to your home province? Does the IRP still hold up in Ontario?

Well, the answer is a complicated one. As a matter of automatic application, no, you could drive in any other province, even after you receive an IRP in BC, provided you have a valid license in that province.

What can BC do?

The province of British Columbia only has the right to legislate within British Columbia. That means that the BC government, under BC legislation, only has the right to impose driving prohibitions that apply within the borders of BC. Therefore, nothing that BC does can make you prohibited in another province.

This doesn’t apply however if you yourself are a BC resident with a BC license, and you are issued an IRP. If that happens, you cannot drive anywhere in Canada, because your driver’s license is cancelled. You’ll get in trouble because you would be considered an unlicensed driver.

Provinces share information

All provinces share information, through the Canadian Police Information Centre, referred to as CPIC. Any officer from any province has all the information about someone’s license status through the database.

So, say you get an IRP in BC with your BC license and then when in Ontario visiting your parents, you’re pulled over by the police and they ask for your license. Even if you don’t have it, they can look you up in CPIC and see that your license in BC is suspended. That would result in you receiving a driving without a license ticket.

On the other hand, if you are from Ontario, after getting an IRP in BC you return home. While driving in Ontario you get pulled over by the police, but can’t produce your license because you had it taken from you in BC, the Ontario police can go into their computer and see that you do in fact have a valid license. The only ticket you may get is for not having your license present.

What can other provinces do if you get an IRP?

When you think of it this way, it seems like an overall easy question to answer, however, this is a more complicated topic than it seems.

Because all provinces are constantly sharing information, anytime you get a ticket or some type of driving event in one province, every other province knows about it.

Most provinces don’t care that you got a speeding ticket in another province, but that changes when it comes to issues of alcohol or issues that affect your right to drive like driving prohibitions. Each province has a discretionary power to reciprocate the prohibition when they see fit.

Basically, this means that they can see you received a 90-day prohibition in BC, and decide that they are also going to prohibit you for 90 days in your home province.

And we’ve seen cases where it’s even worse than that. A previous client who lived in Alberta received a driving prohibition in BC. Alberta saw that his prohibition in BC was connected to alcohol and, as a result, prohibited him for 999 days.

In your own province, if something like this were to happen, you have the right to fight the prohibition.

But essentially, each province has the discretionary power to do whatever they want when they find out you have a driving prohibition somewhere else. This means there is always a risk your home province is going to reciprocate the prohibition which is why it is so important to fight the IRP right away.

Many people don’t realize that provinces have a ton of power to take away a person’s driver’s license and can do it for any reason as long as there is a reason. The reason can’t be totally arbitrary, but it definitely can be you receiving a prohibition in another province.