Unregistered Ontario licence plates spike after renewal fees eliminated

Police say they are dealing with an “overwhelming” number of unregistered licence plates in Ontario as drivers forget to regularly renew.

It is close to two years since the Ford government announced it would scrap the fee to renew licence plates in Ontario, a promise unveiled months before the last provincial election.

The cost to renew licence stickers was previously set at $120 for a year in southern Ontario, with the decision to scrap the fee costing the province around $1.1 billion per year.

The change came into effect in March 2022.

While the Ontario government cut the fee, it did not eliminate the requirement to renew the licence plate itself. Without the financial reminder, some appear to be forgetting they still need to regularly update their plates.

“The number of expired plates is overwhelming, literally hundreds per shift in many cases,” Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Kerry Schmidt told Global News.

He explained the OPP’s 1,400 cruisers have licence plate readers that can scan as many as one million plates per day to check for outstanding issues associated with the car. Those readers can also flag expired plates.

“This can be overwhelming for officers and impossible to keep up with,” Schmidt said.

Data shared with Global News by the Ministry of Transportation shows the number of expired plates has risen since the decision to scrap renewal fees.

In 2021, the year before Ontario eliminated the licence plate fee, there were 372,438 unregistered plates. The next year, that number more than doubled to 814,224 in 2022 as the province dropped renewal fees.

As of June 2023, there were 573,974 expired licence plates in Ontario.

“It is still the law for vehicle owners to renew their licence plate every one or two years at no cost to confirm their automobile insurance is valid and pay any defaulted fees, fines, or tolls,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Transportation told Global News.

“Expired licence plates will remain subject to enforcement action.”

Despite the increase in unregistered licence plates, the vast majority of drivers are still up to date. The total number of active licence plates in the province sat at 13.6 million in December 2022, a year where 814,224 — or six per cent — were unregistered.

The Ministry of Transportation said the elimination of the licence plate renewal fees was part of an affordability push.

“The Ontario government has made life more affordable and convenient for over eight million vehicle owners by eliminating licence plate renewal fees,” the spokesperson said.

While police in Ontario’s biggest city said they have noticed the spike in unregistered licence plates, Toronto police traffic services Const. Sean Shapiro said officers lean toward education over enforcement.

“Very often it’s an opportunity to say, ‘Hey, did you know it was expired and did you know you could renew it and even set yourself up online with the ministry’s free reminder system?'” he told Global News.

The need to explain to drivers is made more pressing by the fact various renewals — including licence plate stickers — were suspended at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Shapiro said.

Although officers are working to reduce the number of expired licence plates through education, Shapiro said the issue ultimately falls low on the force’s priority list.

“It’s not one of those things where we focus our efforts on expired plates,” he said.

“Very much we are looking for the offences that lead to serious injury and death on our roads, so we’re looking for people who are speeding,  driving aggressively, driving distracted or driving impaired. That’s not to say we ignore things, if we see it, we say something about it.”