City hall going after unpaid fines with collection agency

City council is set to ink an agreement with Financial Debt Recovery Limited and retrieve what could be around $6 million in unpaid fines or Provincial Offences Acts (POA).

Councillor, Rick Dubeau says he learned the city has many outstanding POA’s and was wondering if anything more can be done to recover the money. Treasurer, Jamie Howie says it can be hard to collect from certain individuals.

“The individual has to have assets to go against.  A lot of the people have since passed away and writing things off can be difficult.  You have to prove the individual has passed away so a lot of them coming out aren’t identified as to who they really belong to. It can be very hard for collection agencies.”

Howie says they can add the outstanding fines to taxes but the accused has to own property. He said they hired an agency who specializes in POA’s  – hopefully making it easier on every one.”

Dubeau also asked if the millions of dollars owed will ever get down to zero.  Howie says some corporations go through loopholes to get out of it and some people simply won’t pay inevitably increasing the amount of money owed to the city.

Howie finished by saying a provincial committee is currently working on tightening these loopholes in the near future.