The Ford government is set to introduce automatic renewals for licence plates in Ontario as police report a surge in the number of drivers with expired credentials.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford made the announcement in the middle of a press conference on Tuesday, trailing a policy that was initially set to be announced later in the week.
“I’m here to announce today, actually, that we’re getting rid of that totally — registering your vehicle,” Ford said.
The premier said abolishing renewal fees in 2022 was the start of that process.
“We did the first step: getting rid of the sticker,” Ford said.
“Now, we’re getting rid of the re-registration. They’ll be automatically re-registered. So people won’t have to worry about that at all.”
How will it work?
The new system of automatic licence plate renewal will only apply to drivers whose records are in “good standing,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Transportation told Global News.
That means drivers with insurance issues, unpaid tolls or municipal fines will not see their plates automatically renewed.
Under the current system, part of renewing your licence plate includes settling outstanding issues associated with the vehicle.
The spokesperson said further details on the policy will be unveiled later in the week. Those details will include how the province plans to deal with people who have unpaid fines or other registration issues.
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It is not yet clear if the automated system will come at any extra cost to the province.
When will the change be implemented?
The Ford government has not said exactly when automatic renewals will be introduced, but the premier promised it would be on the table “very soon.”
“It will be legislated when we get back,” Ford said.
The changes are part of new omnibus legislation that the province is set to table Tuesday when MPPs return to Queen’s Park after the Family Day long weekend.
At the same event in Mississauga, Ford trailed plans to include a referendum clause over future carbon taxes in Ontario.
The government says the carbon pricing referendum legislation will be part of a larger bill titled the Get It Done Act, to be introduced after the legislature resumes sitting.
Why will renewals be automated?
The policy change comes as police forces in Ontario struggle to cope with an “overwhelming” number of unregistered licence plates in the years since the government abolished renewal stickers.
Ahead of the 2022 election, the Ford government scrapped the fee for renewing licence plates.
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.
While the Ontario government cut the fee, it did not eliminate the requirement to renew the licence plate itself. Without the financial reminder, many appear to be forgetting they still need to regularly update their plates.
Ontario Provincial Police said the number of unregistered plates officers see is high.
“The number of expired plates is overwhelming, literally hundreds per shift in many cases,” Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Kerry Schmidt told Global News.
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.
The Ministry of Transportation confirmed that as of January 2024, there were 1,015,139 expired plates in Ontario.
— with a file from The Canadian Press
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