Research the Law You Broke

You are charged with breaking a specific law. In the British system, laws are acts of parliament which means you are looking for an "act". Your ticket will have a section that says "contrary to" and in it will be a notation which is the act you are charged with breaking. Do an online google search for that act making sure you have the Ontario version of the law. Or you can go to the Ontario Government website that lists Ontario laws and look it up there.

For example, if you are charged with speeding in a community safety zone your ticket will have a section that says "contrary to" and in it will be a notation "HTA". That means your charge is against the Highway Traffic Act.

You then look at the act for information about your charge. To find the specific section of the act that applies to you, press Ctrl+F on your browser to activate the search function and search for your offence.

In our example, pressing CTRL+F and typing "community safety zone" produces this link.

Read the section that covers the offence you are charged with. You are looking for the essential elements of that offence which the prosecutor must prove to convict you.

Reading the community safety zone section, we find that this special zone is created by a municipality by enacting a by-law, identifying a specific physical location, the hours, days and months when the zone is in effect and that they must erect proper signs.

Were you driving in this area when the by-law was in effect? You don't know this unless you see the by-law. In court, the prosecutor will simply have the police officer testify that you were speeding. But you're not charged with speeding, you are charged with speeding in a community safety zone. Which means the prosecutor has to prove it was a community safety zone. He must present a certified copy of that by-law in court to show you were speeding when the by-law was in effect. When you request disclosure he has to give you a copy of it. Most likely, he won't expect you to know this and won't bother doing it. He also won't bother presenting the by-law in court.

That gives you two options, first a motion of improper disclosure or second you can make a "non-suit" motion to the justice that the prosecutor hasn't proven his case and get your charge dismissed. (All of this will be discussed in greater detail under Steps 4 and 5.) Either way, the case against you starts to fall apart.

Another example, for a charge of blocking an intersection the Act states the municipality has to enact a by-law prohibiting people from entering an intersection unless it is clear. But the Act also states that if traffic is moving in a manner that would reasonably lead you to believe that you can clear the intersection before the light turns red, you should not get a ticket.

All you have to show in court is that you did what any reasonable person did which is enter an intersection when the light was green (or even yellow) and you had a reasonable expectation that you would clear it before the light turned red. Whether you cleared it or not does not matter. What matters is that you had a reasonable expectation that you could. You simply point to this section of the Act, say the blurb above and the judge must find you not guilty. Simple and easy!

And if the prosecutor forgets to file the by-law, it is even easier. If there is no evidence of a by-law, then there is no evidence that you broke any law. You can walk away.