Many people have called us in the last two weeks wondering about the Fail 90-day Immediate Roadside Prohibitions (IRP) that were postponed until the end of June. There are two groups of individuals. The first are people who filed for a review shortly before November 30, 2011, and were notified by the OSMV that their prohibition would not come into effect until June 30, 2012. The OSMV said it would render a decision in their case before that date.
As far as we’re concerned, the Immediate Roadside Prohibition law is unconstitutional and these dated IRPs can’t be patched up. Also, it is grossly unfair to make people wait 7 months to learn their fate, stuck in limbo, not knowing whether they would lose their license, job, house, spouse etc.
Some background for those not in this situation: when Sivia was released the Government scrambled to figure out how it could uphold the prohibitions in any event. As far as we were concerned, everyone should have got their money back, prohibitions cancelled and an apology because that would be the moral thing to do.
In a number of cases, hearings were set for IRP reviews or the hearing had taken place but a decision had yet to be rendered. Instead of lifting the prohibitions as we think they should have due to Sivia, suddenly no decisions were rendered at all. Some applicants were stuck with no licence and no review decision. It appeared that the Government’s plan was to render a decision after the 90-day prohibition had been served, which, shockingly, it can do with this legislation.
After some pressure was put on them, they were forced to show their hand. The Government, devoid of fairness, instructed the OSMV adjudicators to not render decisions if the matter was set for hearing or no decision had been rendered. More bizarre, they conducted hearings with the intention of not rendering a decision until who-knows-when. As lawyers, we didn’t know what to make of it, what arguments we should advance — it was unreal. Business as usual. The Titanic was sinking, but the guy who lowers the lifeboats would not do it until he received orders from the captain.
We had hoped that each adjudicator would render the decisions based on their view of the law. Instead, it seemed that there were marching orders or there was some sort of agreement that none of us were told about. In any event, the result was that applicants in this situation were given temporary licenses that last until the end of this month. Poor schmucks.
The Government admitted they were wrong, changed the legislation (which is no genuine fix in our opinion) but nevertheless, the Government steadfastly refuses to admit that it was wrong.
(If you read that previous sentence again, it makes sense.)
So here we are, only a day until the Immediate Roadside Prohibitions for Fail are back in effect, and still we have no decisions on a number of reviews. It’s cruel. Really mean.
What’s going to happen? We don’t know. They may go back to the original default, which is to not render a decision and force the applicants to serve the prohibition. The legislation permits this. We’re not joking.
Or they may issue more temporary licenses. Or they may be hoping that the BC Supreme Court renders a decision that makes matters clearer before the end of the month.
In any event, you can no longer call these driving prohibitions immediate. They are really not immediate roadside prohibitions any longer. It seems to us to be a breach of principles of natural justice to refuse to render a decision and thereby keep people hanging for seven months when the ostensible goal is to render the decision in fewer that 21 days from the date that the prohibition is issued.
Postscript:
Time permitting, in the next few days we’ll explain a little about where things are going for people who have a court order suspending their immediate roadside prohibition until the end of June.
We apologize for not covering some RDP and Interlock issues as we had hoped to do this week. We’ve been very busy in our office.
If you’re following the Port Moody calibration issue, check out the Media section of our site. We’ll have more to say on this in the next week (time permitting).