Ontario Highway 407 - Tolling - Plate Denial

Plate Denial

Following a judicial decision by the Ontario Divisional Court on November 7, 2005, the Ontario Registrar of Motor Vehicles was ordered to begin denying the validation or issue of Canadian and US license plates and vehicle permits for 407 ETR users who have failed to pay owed fees for at least 125 days. On November 7, 2005, Ontario's Transportation Minister Harinder Takhar said in a press release, "That is very serious... when it occurs through no fault of their own, but because the 407 ETR electronic system made a mistake."

On November 24, 2005, the MTO announced that it would appeal the decision but would begin to deny plates until the appeal was decided. On February 24, 2006, the Ontario Court of Appeals denied the government leave to appeal the November 7, 2005 decision. As a result, plate denial is once again in place.

Previously, in February 2000, the Ontario government would suspend driver licenses for unpaid 407 ETR bills; however, this practice was quickly suspended by the Ontario government and the new owner of the highway after receiving many complaints from customers about erroneous billing. Between 2000 and 2005 the company said it improved its billing system to minimize the chance of plate denial errors.

The Highway 407 Act, Section 22, gives the owner of the 407 ETR the ability to deny license plate renewal of drivers who have refused to pay their toll for more than 125 days after the toll first incurred. Before the 407 can notify the Registrar of Motor Vehicles to deny plate renewal or refuse to issue a new plate for a driver, the Highway 407 Act specifies how this process would work.

According to the Highway 407 Act, Section 13(1), the 407 can only charge a driver under two conditions: the name of the person whom the plate portion of the vehicle is issued to, or the name of the person whom the transponder unit affixed in the vehicle is issued to. When a driver enters the 407, if he or she does not have a valid transponder in the vehicle, the 407 snaps a picture of the license plate and receives information about the person the plate is registered to, including the name and address, from the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. The 407 would then mail a bill to the address that is on file at the Ministry of Transportation. Drivers will have 37 days from the billing date on the statement to pay their tolls.

As the 407 ETR does not automatically receive updates to the Ministry of Transportation's driver database, the 407 ETR may send bills to an address where the driver no longer resides, resulting in accumulating charges and penalties without the driver ever seeing a bill. To prevent this from happening, Ontario drivers who use the 407 ETR, especially those who do not have a transponder leased from the 407 ETR (customers who lease transponders have already given the 407 ETR their billing information and as such are less likely to be affected by this), are required to keep their contact information updated with 407 ETR. Originally, the instruction that the customer had to keep their contact information updated was only printed on the payment envelope sent with the statement. This information was later added to information printed on the statement itself.