Ontario vehicle owners will get rebates for license plate renewal fees, Doug Ford says

The check is in the mail—almost.

Premier Doug Ford is promising rebates to millions of Ontario vehicle owners for the license renewal fees they paid during the pandemic, and will scrap the fees and renewal stickers going forward.

As first reported by the Star early this month, the billion-dollar plan comes with the June 2 election just more than three months away.

Rebates should be sent out beginning in late March to almost eight million owners of passenger cars, light trucks, motorcycles and mopeds.

“After two years of the pandemic, people don’t need any more hurdles getting back on their feet and back to normal,” Ford said Tuesday in Richmond Hill, touting the end of license renewal fees as an affordability measure.

“People have been hurt so much over this pandemic and that’s a billion dollars back into the economy.”

The fees range from $120 a year for passenger cars in southern Ontario to $12 for mopeds.

New Democrat MPP Jennifer French has called the scheme “shameless,” with the election campaign set to officially begin in early May.

The plan, which takes effect March 13, also comes at a time the province is recording multibillion-dollar deficits because of the expensive fight against COVID-19, and as gasoline prices are soaring.

Ford has not yet fulfilled the second half of his 2018 election promise to cut the price of gasoline by 10 cents a liter. He said he would do that by canceling the previous Liberal government’s 4.3 cent a liter carbon levy — which he did — and by cutting the provincial gas tax by 5.7 cents, which has not yet happened.

“We’re going to look into that,” he told reporters.

Legislation was to be introduced Tuesday to enable the refunds of fees paid since March 2020.

Motorists will be mailed refund checks providing they have paid any outstanding traffic or parking fines, fees and road tolls.

In other pre-election measures aimed at motorists, Ford is also ending tolls on Highways 412 and 418 east of Toronto starting April 5.

While renewal fees are also being eliminated for most passenger, light duty commercial vehicles, motorcycles and mopeds owned by a company or business, they will not be eligible for the refunds.

Motorists will still have to renew their license plates at one- or two-year intervals to confirm they have valid insurance and that outstanding fines, fees and tolls are paid.

Without stickers indicating that licenses have been renewed, the government will rely on automated license plate recognition technology to help police, saying such systems can read thousands of plates per minute and flag vehicles of interest such as drivers with suspended licences, stolen vehicles and those named in amber alerts.

Several police forces are already using the technology. Quebec, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories, Manitoba and Alberta have previously eliminated renewal stickers.

There are no changes to renewal fees and requirements for license plate stickers on heavy commercial vehicles and snowmobiles.

Drivers remain required to pay $90 to renew their driver’s licenses every five years.