01/11/2022
New UCP Government Rule: Guilty Until Proven Innocent
1. For traffic charges you will have no right to a trial before an independent judge;
2. You will have no right to face your accuser; and
3. You will have to pay a fee to the government for the privilege of defending yourself.
"...Starting Feb. 1, traffic court will be replaced by a new system to process motorist violations. Instead of getting a ticket with a court date on it, infractions will be handled digitally. Those who choose to contest their fines will no longer have the opportunity to make a court appearance but must go through an online process involving an adjudicator instead of a judge.
Anyone receiving a ticket will have just one week to review it instead of several weeks. Those who want to challenge the ticket will have to pay a non-refundable fee of up to $150, depending on the amount of the fine. ..."
As counsel I can confirm that I have opposed and won against traffic tickets, and that happens all the time.
Traffic tickets can have huge impacts to people's lives, including their employment, and the police officer writing the ticket shouldn't be the investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury, and they shouldn't be immune from having to appear, and do all the usual things like identify the accused, testify that they broke the law, and face cross-examination by defence counsel to uncover mistakes.
But that's what the UCP government is doing to you.
Now you might not care about the rule of law, the presumption of innocence or any of the usual things that protects innocent people from wrongful punishment at the hands of the state, at least in the context of traffic court.
The bigger issue is that the erosion of rights, freedoms and the rule of law at the hands of a government never stops with their first bite (and this is not their first bite). The destruction of rights by a government is nothing less than an addiction they thrive on.
They will like not having to deal with troublesome things like rights, an independent judiciary and things like being innocent until proven guilty, and they will march on in their destruction of your liberty.
Sadly, most people will let them.
Jason Kenney
There’s little doubt that Alberta’s traffic court needs a major overhaul. Part of the provincial court of Alberta, the division processes about two million…
