Councillors Oliver, Etrini and Foulds December 5th
Thunder Bay City Council is not done just yet with the topic of stop arm cameras on school buses within the city.
City administration presented a report to council with its recommendation to not move forward with having the cameras installed, citing issues with an inability to lay the fines and a lack of a processing centre for images captured.
However, a motion by Westfort councillor Kristen Oliver will see the subject transferred to the Intergovernmental Affairs Committee, as this would allow the city to take the issue to the province, where Oliver believes it should be addressed. She adds this could be argued as another form of downloading by the province.
“Every municipality across this province has the same ability to have the school buses outfitted with the cameras, the only municipality that’s doing it right now is Ottawa, who did create their own processing centre. So I think municipalities are looking at this as a barrier to implementing the program and so if we could push back on the province and include the cameras on the stop arms through the Ontario processing centre, which already exists to do the red light camera infractions and the speed zone infractions.”
Oliver says discussions would take the city to the Ministry of Transportation where they would ask to have the program included. She is optimistic the government will be open to discussions as it did lay the groundwork with legislation to allow for the cameras to be installed on the buses.
“So if they are recognizing the need for school children’s safety I think they see some value in it obviously, and because they already have a provincial processing centre that deals with other infractions…..I don’t see why this would not proceed through.”
The motion was passed with full support of council and the city’s Intergovernmental Affairs Committee will meet for the first time this term on December 12th.
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