The way the demerit point system actually works in Ontario is you don’t start with any demerit points. So it’s important to keep that in mind. Any novice driver, any G driver, G2 driver, AZ driver. Any classification of driver is assumed to have a very clean record without demerit points.
The problems occur as you get a charge or ticket and you’re convicted and the demerit points fall onto your record. Now because there’s a varying degree of licenses in Ontario including graduated licensing, the impact of a ticket on a graduated license is going to be very different than one on a full G license.
So we’ll just sort of stick with that for now to answer that question fully. A full G driver in Ontario can accumulate as much as 15 points. That’s a significant number. And at 15 points, if you were to quickly accumulate that there, there is no doubt that they would suspend your driver’s license and there’s no doubt but at some point along the road, you would’ve contacted OTD legal for some help. On a regular G license, which G means general license. If you accumulate nine points on your license you will be brought in for an interview. You’ll be interviewed by the Ministry of Transportation and they’re gonna decide based on the egregiousness or the difficulty or the type of offenses that you accumulate the points on.
For example, if you accumulated points in a minor fashion, meaning that there is no particular complication to it. Meaning there was no accident, no one was hurt. Well, that would mitigate or help neutralize the position of the ministry on whether or not they’re going to suspend your license at that interview.
If you’re facing an interview, I would suggest you call us and we’ll try to guide you through something like that. One other thing that I’m trying to capture the full spectrum of clients that may call in is we have younger drivers or new drivers that would be carrying a G1 or a G2 driver’s license, and it’s important to note that you don’t have the same discretion that you would under a full G license.
What I mean by that is you don’t have the ability to accumulate a lot of tickets with a lot of points. By way of example, if you have a G2 driver’s license, and for any one event, let’s say speeding, you accumulate four demerit points. So that’s, for example, a speeding ticket that’s at least 30 over the limit, it would have four demerit points. If you held a G2 at that time, the four demerit points would trigger a license suspension of 30 days. Problem there being is the obvious 30 days that you cannot drive, that blemish would also appear on your driving abstract.
By the same token, if you had a G2 license and you accumulated two points and three points and then another two points, well, as soon as you hit an accumulation of points of six or more; same thing would happen. You would lose your driver’s license for 30 days. Again, as I’ve said, it would arrive on your driving abstract and be a significant problem for you in the future as you try to get insurance.
