Juno News - Speed camera shakedowns

00:00:00.000 Speeding tickets. Nobody likes them. And on paper, the rules are simple. Obey the limit.

00:00:05.880 It keeps people safe and just carry on. Now, I'm pretty chill on the road. I rarely drive above the

00:00:11.580 speeding limit, but I've definitely noticed that doing that irritates people almost all the time.

00:00:18.140 For many, maybe even most people, driving slightly over the speed limit is pretty common.

00:00:24.180 Try going just a few kilometers over in a community safety zone and weeks later,

00:00:29.100 you're likely to get a ticket in the post, possibly for a camera you never even saw.

00:00:34.260 We're told that this calms traffic, that it increases safety and reduces serious injury,

00:00:40.720 but does it? So why do we keep seeing ordinary drivers nicked for road behavior that a live

00:00:48.300 officer possibly wouldn't even notice in the past or stopped you for? The locations of these cameras

00:00:52.900 are pretty clever. The thresholds for them to capture you going over is pretty low. And the

00:00:58.160 court pipeline hums along while families wonder why their mailbox feels a little bit full.

00:01:03.680 My guest has been through the grinder on this topic. Journalist and historian John Robson picked up

00:01:09.800 four photo radar tickets in Ottawa and decided to push back. He wrote about it in the C2C journal in a

00:01:16.700 piece called Hot Tickets, My Role and the Coming Downfall of Speed Cameras. And he's going to spell out

00:01:22.240 why the setup offends the most basic fairness and common sense principles. I'm Melanie Bennett. This is Disrupted.

00:01:38.760 John Robson, thank you so much for joining me today.

00:01:41.200 A pleasure to be here.

00:01:43.280 I was, maybe I shouldn't giggle, but I did have a few giggles at your article from the C2C journal,

00:01:50.700 Hot Tickets, My Role and the Coming Downfall of Speed Cameras. And that's what I want to talk to you

00:01:56.720 about today. But before we get into the speed cameras, there was one element of the article,

00:02:03.640 which is not quite speed cameras that I want to open up with. It was this motorist in 1995.

00:02:10.020 Who, what's his name here? It's Thompson. Gord Thompson of Campbellford drove on the highway 401

00:02:18.940 at exactly the speed limit. So at the time, 100 kilometers an hour with his friend on the second

00:02:25.400 lane, also driving 100 kilometers an hour. And for being a law abiding citizen, shall we call him,

00:02:33.780 he was charged with careless driving and obstructing a highway? What's up with that?

00:02:41.800 It's a classic illustration of the fact that the speed limit in this country is not meant to be enforced

00:02:48.920 literally. I don't know, careless driving. He was very carefully driving down one lane at the speed

00:02:53.840 limit. But the point is that if you drive at the posted speed limit on any road, you will back up traffic

00:03:00.060 for an enormous distance because it is not the speed at which people drive, nor is it the speed at which

00:03:06.060 they should drive. And the fact that you're not allowed to go over the speed limit and you're also

00:03:11.720 not to go at the speed limit indicates that there is something wrong with the law, partially fixed by

00:03:17.400 the fact that nobody ever enforced it, right? Nobody in the history of the human race has gotten a ticket

00:03:22.680 from 105 on the 401, at least. I mean, not when, you know, daylight and so on. If there was a howling

00:03:28.180 blizzard and stuff, you might. But it just, it dramatizes my point in fighting these photo radar

00:03:35.380 tickets that the posted speed limit is not meant to be enforced. So taking you back, so we'll go into

00:03:42.460 the speed cameras now, because as you said, no one has been given a ticket for driving 105 in a 100 zone

00:03:50.580 on a highway. But in your article, it's very clear that people are getting a number of tickets for driving

00:03:56.720 a few kilometers over the speeding limit in certain zones. Do you want to tell us a little bit about

00:04:00.400 that? Yeah, and the background to it is, and I think this is important to the story, that I hadn't

00:04:07.720 had a speeding ticket anywhere in the world in 25 years. So I don't want people to think that I'm a

00:04:12.760 scofflaw or a dangerous driver. I drive at traffic speed. I drive responsibly. And suddenly, bing, bing,

00:04:20.100 bing, bing, I got four tickets in the space of about a year in Ottawa, three of them from the same

00:04:26.040 intersection. And when the first one arrived, initially, I thought it was on some other

00:04:29.960 matter. And I opened it, and I saw that that one was for going like 62 in a 50 zone. And I thought

00:04:35.100 this was a prank, because nobody, again, assuming that the traffic conditions are good, they're not

00:04:41.140 weaving between lanes, they're not doing anything else, smoking a big joint there at the wheel.

00:04:46.680 Nobody gets a ticket for going 62 in a 50 zone. No human police officer would ever pull you over for

00:04:52.300 doing that. The police do it, you know, the judges do it, the politicians do it. And so I thought,

00:04:58.740 well, there's something unreasonable about this. And then I got a flurry of them. And I realized that

00:05:03.000 what they were doing is a dirty trick. They were taking normal behavior that everybody engages in

00:05:08.580 and criminalizing it for profit, that they were not interested in traffic safety. This is a highway

00:05:14.480 robber and a stolen vest. They were interested in getting the money out of your pocket and into theirs,

00:05:19.840 because governments cannot manage their finances. There's one place down in southwestern Ontario,

00:05:26.180 where they're looking to increase the number of tickets they give out by a factor of 12 in the

00:05:30.540 next four years. Why? Because Canadians are bad drivers? No, because they desperately need the money. 1.00

00:05:37.480 And so I decided I would fight this. I said, I'm going to go to court, I'm going to cite the charter.

00:05:42.660 I'm going to say we live under the rule of law. And part of the rule of law is having standing rules,

00:05:47.580 as John Locke says, that people know about and are made with their consent. And everybody knows

00:05:52.920 you don't get penalized for going slightly over the speed limit. And we would never consent to such

00:05:57.900 a rule. And so, of course, I was laughed out of court. But that was predictable, because the

00:06:03.180 government is so desperate for money. And frankly, the people who preside over traffic courts were

00:06:08.120 hand in glove with the prosecutors to empty your pocket. It's not a normal court setup where the

00:06:13.780 executive branch is squaring off against the citizen with an independent judicial overseer.

00:06:19.740 It's just to shear the sheep as fast as possible and move on.

00:06:24.340 So let's go back to the safety element, because the idea behind speeding cameras and being more

00:06:32.960 effective in catching drivers is that I imagine if you give them a ticket, if somebody has a penalty

00:06:39.160 for driving too fast in, let's say, a restricted zone, so maybe it's a school zone and so on and so

00:06:43.720 forth, that that will calm traffic and that will be safer for people in those zones. Is there evidence

00:06:48.560 for that actually being the case?

00:06:50.480 No, that's a complete lie. And you know it's a lie, because if they stationed a human officer there with

00:06:54.900 a speed camera, what they would do is pull over the people who are going way too fast. And so if they

00:07:00.240 had calibrated these cameras in such a way that they gave you a ticket if you were going 70 in a 50 zone,

00:07:05.020 or 85 in a 60 zone, that kind of thing, yeah, because the couple of things that really are

00:07:10.640 known to kill, and one of them is very high speeds, and another one is speed differentials,

00:07:14.880 but the idea that a machine should ticket you for going 12 or 14 kilometers over the limit when a

00:07:21.140 human officer wouldn't means it's not about the safety. And the other thing is it's not worth their

00:07:26.740 time to have the whole police force out there ticketing people for going 14 kilometers over,

00:07:30.580 but speed cameras empty your pocket cheaply. So it's a complete act of plunder. And another thing,

00:07:37.120 you don't lose points for it, because they can't prove you were at the wheel, whereas when a police

00:07:42.120 officer pulls you over, it's fairly obvious that, yes, this is me and the chair officer.

00:07:46.280 So they are actually lying rather more brazenly even than the authorities normally lie.

00:07:51.460 It's about the revenue. And again, you look at the place where they're planning to give everybody

00:07:55.600 a ticket every year. Do they think everybody is a bad driver and is creating a safety hazard?

00:08:00.580 No. Do they want them to slow down? No. They want them to get the tickets because they need the money.

00:08:06.480 And as I did tell one justice of the peace, the state's fiscal incontinence is not my concern.

00:08:11.480 My concern is living under rules that we understand and consented to. And again, as they say in one of

00:08:18.660 the federalists talks about this, that it's no use having laws you make yourself if they're so

00:08:23.100 complicated or changed so often that you can't know what they are. And the trick with photo radar is you

00:08:28.360 don't know that on this particular stretch of road, which looks like any other innocent stretch of

00:08:33.640 road, you can't drive at the speed. You can drive everywhere else. That's how they catch you. That's

00:08:38.320 how they trick you. And as I said, again, to one of the justices of the peace, this is dirty. 0.83

00:08:42.640 This is not a change they announced and told us from now on, on this particular three block stretch

00:08:47.800 of the road. You have to slow down weirdly and then you can go back to what you were doing.

00:08:51.480 If they told us that we do it, they wouldn't give it any tickets, but they want to give out the

00:08:55.440 tickets because they need the money. So this whole thing about safety is pious fraud.

00:09:01.780 So you mentioned, uh, was it the town of Welland? Am I mistaken? That wanted to ticket everybody?

00:09:08.160 Uh, I'll just check that because I think you're right.

00:09:10.080 It's well, County Wellington that wants to, uh, that managed to give out, um, 7% of all drivers

00:09:18.580 during one period, got a ticket and it's Waterloo that plans to go from 70,000 to 875,000 in four

00:09:25.660 years. Do we know where the money is going? It's going to the usual, you know, salaries,

00:09:32.220 inefficiency, social programs that don't achieve their goals, whatever it is that government is

00:09:37.200 doing. But if government can't afford what it's doing on the basis of its taxes, and I should

00:09:41.520 mention in Ottawa that my property taxes just shot up as well. Um, you know, the, the federal tax

00:09:47.380 burden is close, I believe to an all time high in this country. Governments cannot live within our

00:09:51.860 means. And they think that taking the money out of our pocket through some other pretext will

00:09:56.500 somehow make it more bearable. I mean, we've seen obviously Mark Carney was looking to do a kind of

00:10:01.320 reboot and enhance productivity and get more investment and get real wages up after a decade of

00:10:06.520 stagnation, but he can't do it because he can't get it into his head that we're overgoverned. And

00:10:11.460 if you're overgoverned, what you have to do is be less governed. He's just not capable of having

00:10:16.340 that thought in his head. And again, you see this, like the mayor of Ottawa, he's, he's not a fool and 0.93

00:10:20.880 he's not a bad guy, but he's just so conventional in his thinking. And they come to him and say,

00:10:26.800 well, Mr. Mayor, we could cut spending, but you know, we actually, we can't that we're just kidding.

00:10:30.800 Ha ha. But what we can do is keep raising revenue by every imaginable means and ring it out of the

00:10:35.200 citizens. And I mean, one of these trials, the justice of the peace told me I had to get a move

00:10:39.200 on because other people were waiting to be convicted. And then afterward, I sort of, I,

00:10:43.280 I thanked him for giving me some limited time. And he said, Oh, I have all the time in the world for

00:10:47.160 you. It's like, no, you don't. You told me to shut up and pay up so you could get to other people's

00:10:52.100 wallets. It's an extraordinary business. And part of what I say is you should fight these tickets,

00:10:57.140 fight them peacefully, fight them in a law abiding way, but make them cost more to collect than the state

00:11:02.160 gets from you. Because if it's really about safety, they won't mind, Oh, what price the safety of our

00:11:06.360 children. But if it's secretly a lunge for your cash, like, you know, the, the one-eyed bandits

00:11:11.380 and you make it more expensive to collect than it's worth to them, they'll stop doing it.

00:11:17.220 Yeah. I, I, it seems like there's some element of anarcho tyranny going on because, you know,

00:11:23.300 when you put in these speed cameras and they're, they're an easy way, like you say, to capture,

00:11:27.600 you know, capture people going above the speed limit to collect all these revenues. It's just

00:11:32.800 an easy target. Right. And then, but then on the other hand, we have all this increasing crime all

00:11:38.980 over the country and these criminals, often violent criminals get released on bail, but this is the

00:11:43.700 thing that gets focused on. So it just seems a little bit ridiculous, but so you, we, we've sort

00:11:49.100 of talked a little bit about your personal experience in this, because obviously you received a whole bunch

00:11:53.000 of tickets and this kicked off this journey and you've been fighting it. What, what's the situation

00:11:57.660 right now with those tickets or what stage are you in, in fighting those tickets?

00:12:02.400 Oh, well, it was actually, it was quite a diverting business because the first time I, I presented a

00:12:07.800 charter defense and, uh, the JP told me you have no charter rights in my courtroom. And I thought,

00:12:13.800 gee, it's meant to bring a tear to our eyes on July 1st, but apparently you don't bring that

00:12:17.580 stinking rag into this courtroom. And he convicted me. The next JP listened to the charter argument and

00:12:24.200 said, uh, nope, sorry, hand over your wallet. And then the third one said, Hey, you can't bring a

00:12:29.400 charter defense without permission from the attorney general. And I thought, well, that's a bit odd

00:12:34.340 since the attorney general is trying to convict me. But then I said, well, how do I do it? And nobody

00:12:38.020 knew it. It took months to figure out. And finally, I had to write to the attorneys general of Canada

00:12:43.320 and Ontario saying, may I humbly beseech you for permission to bring the Canadian charter of rights

00:12:48.720 into a Canadian courtroom. And so then I got to bring up my charter defense and the justice is

00:12:52.820 like, yeah, well, whatever the law is what it is. And so, uh, I mean, she was like, well, well,

00:12:56.560 you know, I have to defer to the law. And I was trying to explain to her, no, the point of the

00:12:59.900 charter is to establish that certain kinds of laws are invalid in this country, but that wasn't going

00:13:04.620 anywhere. So I was of course convicted and, um, and now I have to pay up. Um, actually that one still

00:13:10.480 has to go to trial by charter defense was demolished and then they're still going to have

00:13:13.540 a hearing. Um, but they convict everybody. I've sat through a number of these and the only two

00:13:17.640 people I ever saw get off were represented by big companies. Um, everybody else is just convicted,

00:13:22.600 bang, convicted, bang. And you know what else? If you fight the ticket and lose, they charge you more.

00:13:29.220 And they tell you, this is not meant to be a disincentive. It's like, who are you kidding?

00:13:33.020 You try telling people if they fight the ticket and lose, they'll get a discount and see how many

00:13:37.200 people fight them. But I still say, go in there and take up the court's time. Oh, also when you go

00:13:42.260 in there, they say, Hey, you can go into a breakout room and talk to someone about your chances of

00:13:45.740 getting off. Who do you talk to? A prosecutor, someone who has paid full time to convict you.

00:13:52.140 And I pointed out that there was a conflict of interest there and they looked like at me,

00:13:55.860 like I was from Mars. So basically you always lose, but if you make it cost them more than it's worth

00:14:02.860 and tear away that orange vest they've stolen and just say, you're in it for the money, aren't you?

00:14:08.320 Well, it's going to take you enough time to convict me of expensive court time that you won't make a

00:14:13.880 profit on the deal. But also, you know, in municipal elections, vote people out who stand for this

00:14:19.020 nonsense, put pressure on the provincial government. Just do not stand for the state robbing you,

00:14:25.780 basically putting on a surtax on driving because they can't control spending.

00:14:29.660 Don't let them do it to you. Traffic tickets should be about safety. And that's Canadians 0.80

00:14:35.720 are into safety. They don't object to traffic tickets for safety. And as I say, if you get

00:14:39.580 pulled over by a live officer who says you were going too fast, you don't feel ill used. You feel

00:14:44.660 embarrassed. You say, I'm terribly sorry. Give me the ticket and you pay it right away.

00:14:48.680 But these things are doing something very different. They're emptying your pocket for doing something

00:14:53.440 everybody does. And I said this again to the justice of the peace and said, you're going to drive home

00:14:57.940 at the same speed I got ticketed for. And you know it. You go back and forth from work every day and

00:15:03.160 you don't drive at the speed limit. And so you are actually penalizing me for something you know is

00:15:09.480 not an offense against peace, order or good government. So don't stand for their hypocrisy and 0.89

00:15:15.000 don't let them profit from this conduct.

00:15:17.680 Well, as we've seen, even if you do follow the rules, you can still get in trouble. If you're

00:15:21.920 following the speed limit, as you should be doing, to bring it back to the beginning of this episode,

00:15:27.940 so what is, where can people find your stuff? And is there things that people should be looking

00:15:33.460 out for in the future coming from you, John? Well, they should certainly look in the C2C 1.00

00:15:38.660 journal for this piece. I've written about it elsewhere, but C2C are the ones that led the way

00:15:42.760 and I'm grateful to them for doing so. I also write for the National Post. I write for the Epoch Times

00:15:47.640 and I write a great deal about how government has ceased to trust the citizens and the police no longer

00:15:53.200 behave like members of the public paid to do what it's incumbent on all of us to do, which would include

00:15:57.720 you know, we don't all sit around wishing we could stop people going 61 in a 50 zone.

00:16:02.780 And I'm also, believe it or not, a successful YouTuber, the Climate Discussion Nexus, which

00:16:07.840 challenges the conventional wisdom on climate change. We've had over 15 million views, so check

00:16:13.560 us out there as well, please. That's wonderful. Thank you so much, John, for joining me today.

00:16:18.860 It's been a pleasure. You heard it from John Robson. If a camera tags you for going a few clicks

00:16:24.340 over, don't just grumble and pay it. Contest it. Use the proper steps available to you.

00:16:31.680 Ask for disclosure. Record the delays. Make it cost more to collect the fine than it's worth.

00:16:38.880 And then vote like it matters. And don't forget to leave a comment telling us all about your

00:16:44.320 speeding camera experiences, because I'm sure a lot of you have them. I'm Melanie Bennett.

00:16:49.860 Thanks for watching and see you next time.

Juno News - September 05, 2025

Speed camera shakedowns

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