Tattletale tickets City’s parking authority proposes using snitch photos to nab rule-breakers By: Kevin Rollason Posted: 5:30 PM CST Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2025

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This article was published 03/12/2025 (259 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Parking Authority wants to explore the idea of having citizens snitch on scofflaws.

The agency, which will present its 2026 business plan at next week’s civic public works committee meeting, says that one of its goals and strategies during the next three years is to “explore a photo-based public reporting system for parking violations.”

The strategy would include using “technology and community involvement to identify and address parking violations using a photo-based public reporting system, allowing WPA to issue tickets by mail and redeploy officers to priority complaints.”

Christian Sweryda, a road-safety researcher, said he doesn’t want to see the city go down that road.

“This is a terrible idea to get people ratting on each other,” said Sweryda, a former member of WiseUp Winnipeg, a group that opposes photo-radar ticketing.

“It’s inviting confrontation and it’s taking a picture of what? A lot of parking violations aren’t immediately apparent. They are just getting citizens to do their job.”

Sweryda said he also believes some people might have ulterior motives for pulling out their smart phones to take photos of vehicles in violation of parking regulations.

“People are just going to go after people they don’t like,” he said Wednesday.

“They should just make the rules known to people. They should paint the curbs yellow for no parking, green for parking, blue for disabled, and red for stop… it just shows they run it as a business and not for public safety.”

Len Eastoe, a former police officer who runs Traffic Ticket Experts, said while the informant would, initially, be anonymous to the alleged parking offender at the time of a violation, that could change.

“This is a terrible idea to get people ratting on each other.”

“What if the person challenges the ticket?” Eastoe said. “Now the person who took the picture would have to come in to court if the person disputes the ticket.

“I don’t think we should be turning citizens into agents of the police or the Winnipeg Parking Authority.”

The city councillor who chairs the committee the parking authority reports to isn’t thrilled with the idea.

“It seems a lot of Big Brother to me,” Coun. Janice Lukes said.

“I’m all for enforcement — the driving and parking behaviour from my perspective has gone off the rails — but having residents taking photos of residents just seems a little too far.

“I like tickets, I like enforcement, but even for me this is too far.”

Lukes (Waverley West) said she will be asking the parking authority about the proposal, including what precipitated the idea.

“I like tickets, I like enforcement, but even for me this is too far.”

A city spokesperson said no one from the parking authority was available for an interview.

But, spokeswoman Pam McKenzie said in an email that while the general public can already submit photos of infractions, a parking enforcement officer is tasked with reviewing the matter before a ticket is issued.

McKenzie said the proposed change would allow the authority to “enforce less serious parking violations using public-submitted photographs alone.”

She said the use of citizen photos alone would occur only when there aren’t any parking officers available to investigate and when the vehicle has already driven away.

Meanwhile, the parking authority is forecasting it expects to transfer about $7.4 million to the city’s general revenue fund next year.

The report also said it is looking at continuing the Winnipeg Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle program permanently, submitting a study looking at the costs and benefits of repairing the Millennium Library parkade and considering upgrades to the authority’s queue management system.

The WPA managed 8,216 paid parking spaces in 2024, including 3,850 on-street spots.

Motorists bought 2.6 million hours of parking last year, up from the 2.5 million hours purchased in 2023, which was 25 per cent higher than in 2022.

The WPA said the highest volume of purchased parking was recorded in 2019, at 2.8 million hours, recorded just prior to the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020. No statistics from 2020 or 2021 are listed in the report.

The WPA reports that about 84 per cent of motorists who were fined paid their tickets in the first nine months of this year, but as of Sept. 30 unpaid fines total $12.2 million.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca