So, about that Ontario Fine Victims Surcharge fee
ShortedDiode
Registrant
First the background:
I had to pay a speeding ticket about a year ago and there was the victim surcharge fee tacked on to "help crime victims". Sure, great, whatever. There was a news story about a construction company getting hit with a $60,000 fine plus a 25% victim surcharge. My car was stolen and taken on a joyride recently, not too long before this newspaper article came out. It was recovered but it's been damaged beyond any kind of economical repair and some of the contents were stolen.
So I started looking into this victim surcharge business since, as a crime victim, I needed some help dealing with the after math of the car situation and I couldn't turn up anything. Where does the money go? What does it get used for? How is it allocated? Is there a line item budget showing revenue collected and payments disbursed? I found nothing. The closest thing to a detailed explanation for how the provincial government here does with this was some website saying it pays for "victim services such counselling", but doesn't provide any cash payments to crime victims.
That's when it hit me. Counselling? Such as the kind that doesn't seem to be available for what happened when I was a kid? That was a crime far worse than the car being stolen that I'll still be feeling the effects from long after the car is replaced. And yet there's no assistance for that?
I'm feeling victimized all over again because of this feel good nonsense of collecting money for crime victims every time someone or some company gets hit with a provincial offences fine only to have the cash disappear into some abyss never to be seen again while leaving honest to goodness crime victims stuck in the lurch again and again. It's financial fraud to collect money and have it disappear without being spent on its stated purpose. It's intellectual fraud to claim to help crime victims but leave them stuck in the lurch.
It's hard to explain but the whole ordeal's left me feeling alone and isolated exactly the same way I felt when I was a kid, and this discovery's only upset me more.
I had to pay a speeding ticket about a year ago and there was the victim surcharge fee tacked on to "help crime victims". Sure, great, whatever. There was a news story about a construction company getting hit with a $60,000 fine plus a 25% victim surcharge. My car was stolen and taken on a joyride recently, not too long before this newspaper article came out. It was recovered but it's been damaged beyond any kind of economical repair and some of the contents were stolen.
So I started looking into this victim surcharge business since, as a crime victim, I needed some help dealing with the after math of the car situation and I couldn't turn up anything. Where does the money go? What does it get used for? How is it allocated? Is there a line item budget showing revenue collected and payments disbursed? I found nothing. The closest thing to a detailed explanation for how the provincial government here does with this was some website saying it pays for "victim services such counselling", but doesn't provide any cash payments to crime victims.
That's when it hit me. Counselling? Such as the kind that doesn't seem to be available for what happened when I was a kid? That was a crime far worse than the car being stolen that I'll still be feeling the effects from long after the car is replaced. And yet there's no assistance for that?
I'm feeling victimized all over again because of this feel good nonsense of collecting money for crime victims every time someone or some company gets hit with a provincial offences fine only to have the cash disappear into some abyss never to be seen again while leaving honest to goodness crime victims stuck in the lurch again and again. It's financial fraud to collect money and have it disappear without being spent on its stated purpose. It's intellectual fraud to claim to help crime victims but leave them stuck in the lurch.
It's hard to explain but the whole ordeal's left me feeling alone and isolated exactly the same way I felt when I was a kid, and this discovery's only upset me more.
