Toronto’s auditor general is calling for a tiered penalty system for repeat parking offenders after a city committee learned that the backlog of screening requests has ballooned to 247,514 and millions in red light camera fines remain unpaid.
Massive Backlog and Unpaid Fines
At a Friday meeting of city hall’s audit committee, it was revealed that last year Toronto took more than eight months on average to screen parking penalties. The sluggish pace has driven the backlog to more than 10 times its 2022 level of 23,961 unresolved requests.
Red light camera tickets, recently integrated into the same administrative penalty system, have also proved problematic. While the city collected $25.4 million in red light penalties, another $17.7 million—representing 132,000 tickets—remained outstanding as of the end of 2025, the committee heard.
Repeat Offenders Account for Most Unpaid Penalties
Councillor Stephen Holyday, committee chairman, ordered a report on a tiered penalty structure for repeat offenders, as suggested by Toronto’s auditor general, Tara Anderson. In her report, Anderson noted that other GTA municipalities like Brampton and Markham use progressive penalties or fees for repeat offenders. Her report blamed many of Toronto’s unpaid parking tickets on such delinquent drivers.
“We found that just over 1 million repeat offenders accumulated over 6 million parking penalties worth more than $409 million between 2022 and 2025. As of January 2026, these repeat offenders had not paid about 1.6 million penalties worth over $114 million,” the report stated.
One problem, the report said, is that a frequent offender’s car might be towed, but otherwise they face no further consequences beyond fees. About one-third of the $659.5 million in all parking penalties and fees issued between 2022 and 2025—$215.8 million—was still outstanding as of Dec. 31.
Processing Delays Worsen
While 2.2 million parking and red light camera penalties were processed last year, the average time to screen parking infractions has ballooned since 2022. In 2025, it took an average of 252 days—more than eight months—for city hall to render a decision after a motorist requested a review. In 2022, the average wait was 94 days. The backlog surged from 23,961 unresolved screening requests in 2022 to 247,514 last year.
The wait times even in 2022 were well beyond city hall’s rough target of two months for a screening. City council is expected to set an official time frame next year. The committee was told that more reviews are now being screened, partly due to process improvements but also because more overtime is being authorized.
More parking penalties were disputed in 2025 as fines increased and a rocky economy left “a greater portion of Torontonians” potentially facing “difficulty paying a penalty,” the report added.
Red Light Camera Fines and Lack of Consequences
While the report said red light camera violations are “processed much faster” than parking infractions—48 days on average in 2025—Councillor Paula Fletcher questioned why so many tickets have gone unpaid. Senior city staff told her that such tickets can be disputed for many reasons, and drivers often fight them.
“I would say the delay in the collection would be partly due to the fact that there’s currently no consequences for not paying it,” Anderson told the committee during an exchange with Councillor Vincent Crisanti.
Red light tickets were only folded into the city’s administrative penalty system last year. The committee was told that work remains to integrate it with provincial structures to ensure consequences for nonpayment, which should be completed within about a month.
Fletcher requested heat maps of Toronto’s parking and red light violations be prepared in time for city council’s meeting at the end of the month. “We know your top 10,” Fletcher said of the red light cameras, “but we don’t really know where all the pockets (of frequent violations) might be.”
