Image Credit: ADOBE STOCK

KAMLOOPS - Last month more than 100 Kamloops drivers were ticketed for road offences, but paying their fine isn't the only option they have.

With penalties for driving offences becoming harsher in B.C., a criminal defence lawyer in Kamloops has started a new service to help defend those who are ticketed.

Brad Smith has worked in criminal law for nearly 20 years, both as a federal prosecutor and as a defence lawyer. He says watching the penalties get worse against drivers over the past few years helped inspire the idea of B.C. Ticket Defence.

“It’s motivated primarily because of what I perceive to be a need, certainly in the Kamloops area and generally in B.C., for people to have some recourse to specialized services where they can get advice about charges they’re facing,” Smith says. “We’ve had tickets around for a long time, it’s only in the last couple years that we’ve seen the penalties increasing as much as they have.”

Smith says his criminal law firm will still be his top priority, but he wants to offer people a service that not only could defend them in court, but also offer legal advice and information about what kind of options they have after getting a ticket. He believes this is the first service in Kamloops that will focus specifically on tickets.

He says he’s partnered with a retired RCMP officer who has years of experience in enforcing tickets.

“I first came up with this idea from seeing what goes on outside of traffic court, where you just see large groups of people being dealt with summarily by police officers who will approach people, confirm their identity, encourage them to plead guilty, and it all goes from there,” Smith says. “People traditionally think ‘well it’s just a traffic ticket, I’m just going to pay it’… While that could have made economic sense before, it doesn’t now.”

Smith points to offences like distracted driving or impaired driving, which can have lengthy financial and long-term consequences.

“For the motorist who ends up getting a distracted driving ticket, you’re now potentially… looking at financial penalties that can exceed $1,000, ICBC premiums, loss of licence privileges,” Smith says. “It’s pretty serious when you consider it in the context of just how important motor vehicles are to the majority of society.”

He says the way driving investigations are conducted by police now has become much more sophisticated than in the past, for example having an officer in one area search for distracted drivers with equipment like binoculars, who will radio in information to an officer further away, who can then pull the person over based on the first officer's observations.

Smith compares operations like this to surveillance operations police conduct in dial-a-dope investigations.

The B.C. Ticket Defence website offers information to people trying to fight their tickets, whether it’s a driving offence, environmental violation, criminal code offence, or liquor control licensing act violation, including common scenarios and how they typically play out.

If you’ve been ticketed and want to fight it, you can contact the service and your ticket will be reviewed, the team will determine ticket defence strategies, provide recommendations for proceedings, and give a fee estimate based on how simple or complex your ticket or charge is.

The cost for a file review is approximately $100.

If your case makes it to court and you want representation, Smith or another lawyer would be able to represent you in the case.

“It’s important for drivers because in the same way that the mere making of an allegation of a crime is simply an allegation, the mere handing out of a ticket is an allegation,” Smith says. “Unless they are themselves experts in this area and know the defences, they need someone to help them with that.”

Smith points out that offences like impaired driving can lead to consequences of a 90-day driving prohibition, which can affect someone’s work and personal life.

“This isn’t really a question of whether we should impose consequences on people who have consumed alcohol and driven a vehicle, clearly we should,” Smith says, adding that the real question is how to go through the process fairly and arrive at appropriate consequences for someone.

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