N.S. tickets questioned

OTTAWA — Police in Nova Scotia have one of the highest rates in Canada of ticketing for COVID-19-related violations, according to a new report.

The report, released Wednesday by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, a national human rights watchdog, examines the use of law enforcement and coercive fines during the pandemic.

It found that 98 per cent of COVID-19-related fines issued in Canada have been in Quebec (6,600 charges, 77 per cent of all fines), Ontario (2,853 charges, 18 per cent) and Nova Scotia (555 charges, three per cent). On a per-capita basis, that works out to be 78 tickets per 100,000 people in Quebec, 57 tickets per 100,000 in Nova Scotia, and 20 per 100,000 in Ontario.

Abby Deshman, director of the criminal justice program for the CCLA, says this is problematic.

Speaking with SaltWire Network, Deshman said confusing and sometimes contradictory orders from different levels of government unfairly target vulnerable citizens without positively affecting the trajectory of the coronavirus.

In Nova Scotia, for example, the report says the legal restrictions surrounding parks were so confusing that it was all but impossible to comply. On March 22, the Nova Scotia government declared a state of emergency and closed all provincial and municipal parks and beaches. Government officials specified in statements to the media that trails that were not within provincial parks would remain open for exercise. But in Halifax, local bylaws specifically stated that all trails were defined as parks.

Deshman said the civil liberties association heard from multiple people in the Halifax area who were ticketed for stepping on the grass in the park to avoid a crowded sidewalk or pathway, or walking on a trail that the municipality had indicated was open to the public.

One person who participated in the study, Tristan Cleveland, said his little brother was fined almost $700 in early April for walking on a multi-use path through the Halifax Commons — a corridor for the city that connects neighbourhoods and major main streets with the hospital and downtown — on his way to work. Cleveland said multiuse paths in the park were marked by little flags, as communicated by the municipality via social media, but police had also put up a yellow barrier blocking the entrance to the park.

“You had two parts of government sending a contradictory message,” Cleveland said. “(My brother) ended up paying the fine because that was easier to him than the stress of fighting it. … He really did pay a $700 fine for nothing more than walking to work.”

Deshman said Nova Scotia was also the only jurisdiction that issued a direction to police in the province — both RCMP and municipal — to switch their mandate from education to enforcement. That directive came from Justice Minister Mark Furey on March 30.

“That is an extraordinary step and I think one that is not helpful at all in confronting the public health crisis,” Deshman said.

Nova Scotia was also singled out in the report for the breadth of the public health orders that were passed.