Pawn Shop Bylaw on Back Burner

Monday, August 27, 2007 03:58 AM

(Prince George B.C.) – The City of Prince George is still waiting for the advice from its legal staff on what should be done with its pawn shop bylaw.

The bylaw, still in draft form, has been on hold for more than a month since a B.C. Court of Appeal Judge tossed out a similar bylaw by the City of New Westminster. (click here for the full ruling)

In that case, a pawnshop argued the New Westminster bylaw requiring second hand dealers to collect personal information from the people they acquired their goods and to give that information to the police, was unenforceable and invalid. The Judge, Madam Justice Huddart, ruled the City didn’t have the authority to disclose the information. She also ruled it would be inappropriate for the Court to make policy decisions, so unable to scrap just part of that bylaw, the entire bylaw was nixed.

The Prince George Bylaw was based on the New Westminster document.

City of Prince George Prince George had hoped to have the new rules in place soon, but the City’s Dan Milburn, Manager Current Planning, says the Court ruling and resulting legal review have pushed the schedule back. “Our schedule is off by 6 months at least” says Milburn. If the legal review results in changes Milburn says the whole process will have to be repeated “We would have to go through community consultation again, although it may be just the stakeholders.”

While the pawn shops will still have to collect some information ( they are supposed to be doing that now) the full computerized system that would link with the RCMP is not yet on the books.

Milburn says the bylaw had the best of intentions “Our goal was to change the rules to reduce the chance of them (pawnshops and second hand dealers) being used unwittingly as a fencing operator, and of course to deter crime.”

It is not likely the new bylaw will be in place until the spring of 2008.

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Posted on Monday, August 27, 2007 03:58 AM in News by 250 News

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Comments

Posted by: dgdiggler on August 27 2007 7:14 AM

Just another example of the courts giving more rights to the bad guys and leaving property crime victims feeling even more victimized.

Posted by: owl on August 27 2007 10:02 AM

My conclusion on reading the decision is somewhat different than that the courts have given rights to the bad guys.

What New Westminster did, based on the opinion of three judges, who agreed the intent is for the public good, was to take more authority than was given to them. The province is the one which can enact legislation to do the very thing that New Westminster and Prince George wanted to do and that is take personal information for use by the police.

As the Judges agreed: �Thus, I conclude the requirement to collect, record and transmit that additional information to the police is beyond the power of New Westminster, because it is not granted by the Community Charter or any other enactment.�

That is a fact. The province has such powers and can now decide to:
� change the Charter to give those powers to the municipalities, or
� create its own law around the issue; or
� leave it as is.

So, it is not a matter of the courts giving anyone any rights. That is a matter for elected representatives.

The courts are in essence the �police� of legislation. They determine in this case when someone has taken more authority onto themselves than they have been given.

The Courts also do not typically deal with finding solutions. They could not, in this case, extract the offending section of the bylaw and have an intact bylaw.

Thus, they did not rewrite the bylaw. That is for the municipality to do, or for the municipality to go to the legislature to address.

Posted by: Chester on August 28 2007 8:43 PM

We have appointed judges making all of the decisions. This is a major problem. I hope that the current government changes the way judges are selected and remove the authority they wield.

It seems that they do more to contribute to the problems than administer the justice we have asked them to do. Chester