The City of Brampton has cleared nearly $800,000 in provincial offence fines from its books after determining they were no longer collectible — a move that represents about 10 per cent of all fines the city successfully collected in 2024.
Council approved the write-offs at its Sept. 3 general committee meeting, following a staff report detailing two dissolved companies and one deceased debtor as the source of the unpaid fines. One company was responsible for $127,630 across 19 offences, while the other had a single offence carrying a $356,310 penalty. All fines dated back to 2015 and had been in default since 2017, with both companies later shutting down.
City staff said all attempts to recover the money — including through collections agencies and the Ministry of the Attorney General — were unsuccessful due to missing or incomplete offender information, such as addresses and driver’s licence numbers. The decision removes the debts from the province’s Integrated Court Offences Network (ICON) but does not erase the obligation to pay, meaning the debt technically “continues in perpetuity.”
A separate $311,391.64 in fines and penalties owed by a deceased individual — who had racked up 941 offences — was also written off by Brampton’s corporate collections manager earlier this year.
In total, $795,331.64 has been written off. By comparison, Brampton collected $7.68 million in defaulted fines last year. Since 1999, the city has been responsible for collecting Provincial Offences Act fines as part of a transfer of authority from the province.