Time is up
As we have explained before, many British Columbians are waiting for decisions on their request to extend the 7-day period to file to review their IRP. Until earlier this week there was a moratorium on rendering these decisions. Either the Government instructed the OSMV to stop rendering decisions or the OSMV took it upon themselves to stop rendering decisions. In any event, we believe that this was an effort to block people from accessing the Court to obtain justice.
Some background:
On November 30, 2011, the BC Supreme Court ruled that the law where you were issued a 90-day Immediate Roadside Prohibition for blowing Fail on an ASD is unconstitutional as it is a violation of s8 of the Charter of Rights. Simply put, the scheme was designed to exclude a meaningful review process. You could not dispute your matter on the basis of innocence. You could not argue that the device was faulty, or that you were under the legal limit. Previously the Court ruled that the process lacked most of the mechanisms to differentiate innocent people from guilty people.
Many lawyers knew this and explained it to anyone who contacted them with an IRP. If you went to ICBC to dispute your IRP you could not apply to dispute it on the basis of innocence. The police and the Government obstruct all attempts to collect the disclosure required to prove your innocence.
It is understandable that many people decided to not bother to dispute their IRP because they could not have a meaningful review.
When the decision came from the Court, the Government acknowledged that the process is flawed but offered no direction to people who were caught up in their flawed nasty system. We think that the leaders who made these decisions do not really care about whether the system is fair. Otherwise they would have lifted the prohibitions and punishment so that no further damage was done by their bad legislation.
They did nothing, however. And the people who were wronged got angry. And they contacted us.
So, we have followed the rules and written on behalf of people who made the reasonable decision to not dispute their IRP to request that they be permitted to file a dispute beyond the 7-day arbitrary limitation period. What did the Government do? They ignored our requests.
We set a deadline in our office for when we would go to Court to force them to respond, and that time has come. The Attorney General’s office has confirmed that the OSMV has a duty to respond to the requests. This is their job, and we should expect them to do it without having to take these steps.
On Wednesday we filed Petitions in Court for 10 clients seeking mandamus orders. We hope to file for up to 20 more clients Thursday and Friday.
We are not messing around.
When we get the decisions we will then appeal them all to BC Supreme Court. When we do, all of our clients will be able to get their licenses back pending a resolution of this legal morass. The requirement for the interlock and RDP, which the Government should have suspended on November 30, 2011, will be suspended for our clients.
Everyone who received a 90-day IRP should be entitled to dispute the prohibition. The Government’s bad law turned them away. The Government made major a mistake. We intend to fix it.
