Duhaime asks Quebec government to cancel all infraction tickets related to COVID-19 health measures

Quebecers contesting public fines Lawyer Dylan Jones said the high cost of public health fines and opposition to health measures might explain why many tickets are unpaid.

Eric Duhaime's Conservative Party is calling for the cancellation of all infraction tickets related to health measures.

According to the Conservative leader, the Legault government has been unnecessarily repressive.

A report released two weeks ago showed 46,563 tickets issued between September 2020 and October 2021.

We think it would be important for the government, in a gesture of unity, to abolish these 46 563 tickets of $ 1500 which were mainly attributed to poor people and give amnesty to these people in this exit of crisis," said Duhaime at a press conference Wednesday afternoon at the National Assembly.

In January, CTV News reported that as of Dec. 31, the province had issued just over 30,000 tickets in pandemic-related fines worth more than $45 million, but very few of them had actually been paid.

Duhaime recalled that the public health department had struggled to justify the imposition of the curfew by the Legault government in late December.

The government has put in place "measures that were unjustified, and today, these people find themselves paying fines because they violated a law that was unjustified at the base, which was never recommended," he argued.

According to him, it is, therefore, necessary to drop the pending charges, give amnesty to the people concerned and reimburse those who have already paid fines.

The Legault government could then recognize that it went "way too far" and that it wants to "reconcile all Quebecers."

No fewer than 123 statements of offence per day were issued during the period in question, according to researchers at the Observatoire du profilage, which is part of the School of Social Work at the Université de Montréal.

Offenders were punished mainly for violating rules regarding gatherings, curfews, wearing masks, vaccination passports, and other measures.

Nearly half (48.4 per cent) of all tickets issued in Quebec, just over 22,500, were issued for curfew violations. Montreal also had the most severe curfew enforcement, with a rate of 391.3 citations per 100,000 residents.

Gatherings in private residences were the second most common reason for issuing tickets, representing 31.9 per cent, or 14,856 tickets.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and the Policing the Pandemic Mapping Project (PPMP) found that 66 per cent of the approximately 10,000 tickets issued in Canada between April 1 and June 15, 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic, were issued in Quebec.

The tickets in Quebec carried fines ranging from $1,000 to $6,000, a penalty that is much harder for vulnerable or low-income people to swallow.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on March 16, 2022, with files from CTV News