If I am suspended in another province, can I drive in BC?

A little while ago, we wrote about whether or not you can drive in another province if your licence is suspended in British Columbia. As a result of some of the comments we received on our post, we wanted to answer the question for people who are suspended in another province, and wondering if they can drive in BC.

The answer to this question is, like many legal questions, complicated.

It depends on whether or not you have a BC driver’s license. If you do, and your driving privileges are suspended in another province, and not as a result of a criminal conviction, then you are still allowed to drive in BC, if and until the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles tells you otherwise.

However, if your driving privileges are suspended as a result of a criminal conviction, the driving suspension is Canada-wide. It does not matter whether the court imposed the driving suspension, or whether it happened as a result of a provincial statute in another province. Any type of driving conviction under the Criminal Code will lead to an automatic suspension in BC without notice to you.

This means that your licence in BC gets suspended immediately upon your being convicted, for a period of time as determined by the provisions of the Motor Vehicle Act. The length of time will your licence is suspended will depend on the number of prior convictions you have.

This means if you have a BC license but get convicted of impaired driving in Ontario, your licence in BC will be suspended for one year from the date of your conviction.

You do not get notice of the fact that your licence in BC is suspended for this one-year period. You are just expected to know. So, it is always important to check with ICBC if you have had any type of licence suspension outside of British Columbia, to ensure that you are still safe and lawful to drive here.

The other issue is if you have a license from another jurisdiction. For example, if your driving privileges are suspended in Manitoba and you have a Manitoba licence, you can not get around that by driving around on your Manitoba licence in BC, because your Manitoba licence is suspended.

But what about people who have a driving prohibition in one province, have a license in another province, and then intend to drive in BC? In those circumstances, it is not necessarily clear whether you are permitted to drive in British Columbia.

For example, if you lose your licence for too many traffic tickets in Alberta and receive a driving prohibition, but you are a Saskatchewan resident and have a driver’s licence from there, whether or not you can drive in BC will depend upon whether or not Saskatchewan is also reciprocating Alberta’s driving prohibition.

This is not information that is easy for you to find out, and it is not information that you are likely to find out by calling ICBC. So, if your licence is not from British Columbia, you need to call the licensing authority in the province where your license is from to determine whether it is valid in that province, before driving in BC.

This can be confusing, we understand. If you are concerned at all about your ability to drive in BC as a result of a licence suspension in another province, feel free to give us a call. We will identify the steps that you need to take, based on where your license is from, where your driving prohibition is from, as well as the underlying cause of the driving prohibition.