We have received a few phone calls from people who were represented by other law firms who have learned the hard way that they were prohibited without notice from driving. You may recall that in July 2012, Legal Services Branch sent a letter to lawyers who are acting for people seeking a judicial review of their IRP. The letter defined two groups who had certain aspects of the IRP punishment put off pending the Sivia decision. When Sivia came out, the Government indicated that they want everyone who received an IRP under the unconstitutional law to be punished nevertheless.
Some lawyers did not continue with their client’s Petitions in BC Supreme Court when the letter arrived. For whatever reason, they decided to discontinue the judicial reviews of these IRPs. This is the type of thing done in consultation with your client (if you can locate your client) and in the belief that it is in their best interest.
We did not discontinue any cases because we don’t think it’s in the best interest of our clients at this point. In certain cases our clients elected not to take additional steps and then gave us the instructions to hold off. Each case is different and everyone needs to weigh factors and make the decision that’s right for them.
We were informed that people who did not advance their Petitions on the merits of the case would receive notice after September 21, 2012, telling them that they needed to have an interlock installed and register for the RDP. The information we have now is that apparently this letter of notice did not go out. Moreover, each person who is in this situation and who has not contacted ICBC Driver Services, is probably now prohibited from driving.
Today we checked the license status in a random selection of the cases where we are advancing the Petitions for judicial review. It appears that none of our clients who chose option 1 back in early September are prohibited from driving. This is what we expected. What no one expected is that the Government would forgo or forget to notify everyone else that they would be prohibited from driving as of a certain date if they took no action on their matter in court.
We explained the options back on September 16, 2012. “Take no action” is described as option 2. We didn’t recommend that anyone simply leave things and hope that it all works out. As it turns out, if you made this choice you may already be prohibited without notice from driving.
Option 3, i.e. go to ICBC Driver Services and ask them what steps you must take to have the interlock installed and enroll for the RDP as well as to pay any outstanding fines, is now what you should do if the lawyer you hired did not offer you Option 1, as we did for our clients. We say this because the people who called us who learned of the prohibition the hard way did so when they were pulled over by the police.
Port Moody update
Last Friday in a CTV report about breathalyzer court rulings and the Port Moody calibration debacle, the minister responsible was interviewed. She said the process was not fair and if you are in this situation that you should simply contact the OSMV and they’ll put things right. So we called the OSMV.
It turns out no one told the OSMV. No surprise to us, the minister didn’t seem to know what was going on in her ministry. The people in the OSMV had no instructions or even direction regarding what to do in this case. Ultimately they informed us that we should write to them. Why this is necessary is completely obscure. They gave us no idea of what we should write. There is nothing on their website about any of this.
If you’re angry, we sympathize. We’re not pleased either. We have been contacted by a number of people who received IRPs in Port Moody between September 2010 and October 2011 who are still suffering because they could not afford the interlock and RDP. They should have not received these IRPs and the IRPs should not have been upheld on review.
For the record, we gave all of this information to the Office of the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles back in October 2011. The Ministry has had this information for over a year. There is no excuse for a) not having rectified this for these people at some point over the last year and b) telling people to contact them suggesting it would all be taken care of when in fact they have no plan to help anyone.
How anyone can stand there and say it’s correct or appropriate to punish people on the basis of an unconstitutional law defies explanation.
Also for the record, British Columbia is not the best place on earth. However, in our opinion if Government ministers cared as much about justice as they claim in front of the TV cameras, BC might not be the land that justice forgot.