It started with a responsible decision. A driver working a downtown Montreal shift needed to be at work early. Five in the morning. Rather than burning fuel crawling through what passes for Montreal traffic infrastructure — a highway system currently managing 250,000 hours of annual delay on the A-25 approach alone — he made the kind of choice the city claims to encourage. He parked his car. He took the metro. He did exactly what every transit campaign, every green city initiative, and every “reduce congestion” press release from Valérie Plante’s office has been telling drivers to do for years. He parked in a commercial zone. A large one. Over 500 spaces. Marked lines. No signs indicating restrictions. No tow truck warnings. No time limits posted. A functioning, open, accessible lot the size of a small airport. He came back at 4 in the afternoon. There was a ticket on his windshield.
The Reason on the Ticket The infraction listed: ayant stationné dans un stationnement privé. Having parked in a private parking lot. But here is the problem that the ticket itself cannot explain away. The ticket was not issued by the property owner. It was not issued by a private security company hired by the property. It was not a civil notice from a parking management firm. It was a city parking ticket. Issued by a municipal parking enforcement officer. From the Agence de mobilité durable — the same agency responsible for managing Montreal’s paid parking network and enforcing municipal bylaws across the city. So the city issued a ticket. For parking on private property. With the stated reason being that it is private property. Read that slowly. The city entered what it itself classified as private property, issued a municipal fine on behalf of no one who owns that property, collected money that goes into city coffers — and the legal justification written on the ticket is the very reason the city should not have been there in the first place.
The Legal Problem Nobody Wants to Discuss As a general rule in Quebec, police do not issue tickets in private lots. It is not usual — or possibly legal — for an officer to issue a traffic ticket for an offence in a private business parking lot. (JustAnswer) That is not an opinion. That is a legal reality that Quebec’s own framework acknowledges. The city’s authority to enforce parking bylaws derives from municipal jurisdiction over public infrastructure. When a parking enforcement officer walks onto privately owned commercial property and issues a municipal fine, they are operating in a legal grey zone at best — and outside their jurisdiction at worst. Parking attendants from the Agence de mobilité durable supervise the application of parking rules and issue tickets. (Service de police de la Ville de Montréal) Their mandate is the city’s public road network and metered spaces — not the private commercial parking infrastructure of businesses that pay their own property taxes and maintain their own lots. The commercial property in question has over 500 parking spaces. It serves businesses, customers, employees. It is not city property. It is not maintained by city funds. No city meter was in that space. No city sign governed that space. The only city presence in that transaction was the officer who showed up, wrote a ticket, and left — leaving behind a fine payable to the municipality for an infraction that occurred on land the municipality does not own or regulate.
The Contradiction Built Into the Ticket Itself Here is what makes this specific case impossible to defend on its face. The stated reason for the infraction is stationnement privé — private parking. The city is explicitly acknowledging, in writing, on the official ticket, that this is private property. And yet the city is the issuing authority. The city is the recipient of the fine. By paying the statement of offence, the driver automatically pleads guilty to the offence. (Ville de Montréal) Guilty of what, exactly? Parking on private property — according to a city officer who had no business being on that private property to begin with? The circular logic here is not subtle. If the lot is private, the city has no jurisdiction to issue a municipal parking ticket there. If the city has jurisdiction because the lot is somehow subject to municipal bylaws, then it is not purely private in the way the ticket implies, and the driver parked in a legitimately accessible public-facing commercial space with no posted restrictions. Either the ticket is legally wrong because the city cannot enforce parking on private property. Or the ticket is factually wrong because the space is not private in any meaningful sense that would prevent a member of the public from parking there at 5 in the morning. The city cannot have it both ways. But in Montreal in 2026, it appears it can. Because most people just pay.
The Mechanics of How This Works Parking in Montreal is monitored and enforced by parking officers who work for the Section de l’application de la réglementation du stationnement. It is their job to apply the Highway Safety Code along with local bylaws. (Insurdinary) The key word is bylaws. Montreal’s municipal bylaws have expanded their reach significantly over the years, and the Agence de mobilité durable operates across the city in ways that are not always clearly bounded by the distinction between public and private space. What this creates, in practice, is a system where a parking officer can enter a commercial lot, issue a ticket citing private property as the violation, and the burden then falls entirely on the driver to contest it — within 30 days, in French, through a process that most people either do not know how to navigate or do not feel is worth the time and stress for a $65 or $90 fine. You can contest the ticket within 30 days by entering a not-guilty plea, after which you receive a notice of hearing by mail. (Ville de Montréal) What that process does not tell you is that most people, especially those working early morning shifts and taking the metro to save money, do not have the time, the legal knowledge, or the confidence in a French-language municipal court system to fight a ticket that probably costs less than a day of lost wages to just pay and forget. And the city knows this. The entire enforcement model depends on it.
Is This Hidden Corruption? Or Just a Broken System? The honest answer is: it does not need to be one or the other. A system does not need a conspiracy at its center to produce corrupt outcomes. It just needs the right incentives and no accountability. The incentive here is revenue. Two speed cameras near the Lafontaine Tunnel alone generated $13.57 million in fines in 2025. (MTL Blog) Montreal’s parking enforcement apparatus operates on a similar logic — tickets generate revenue, contested tickets cost the city court time, so the default behavior of the system is to issue questionable tickets knowing that the vast majority will be paid without challenge. A commercial lot with 500 spaces near a metro station is a perfect target. Dozens of cars. No obvious restrictions posted. Drivers who parked early, went to work, and will come home to a ticket they did not expect and do not understand. The property owner did not request enforcement. The city officer was not protecting anyone’s private parking rights. The lot was not full. No business was harmed. But the city collected money. From a worker who took the metro to avoid contributing to the exact traffic congestion the city spends millions complaining about and billions pretending to address.
What This Driver Should Do Contest the ticket within 30 days. Enter a not-guilty plea. Bring documentation — photos of the lot, the absence of restriction signs, the time of arrival if possible, and the ticket itself with its stated reason of stationnement privé. (Ville de Montréal) The argument is straightforward: if the lot is private, the city had no jurisdiction to issue a municipal ticket there. If the city had jurisdiction, the lot is not private, and there were no posted restrictions preventing parking. The city’s own ticket contains the contradiction. Make them explain it to a judge. Most people will not do this. They will pay the fine, absorb the injustice, and move on. And the system will continue working exactly as it was designed to — not to protect anyone’s property rights or ensure public safety, but to extract money from people who are too busy, too tired, or too uncertain to fight back. That is not a parking enforcement system. That is a tax on people who cannot afford lawyers. And in a city that cannot finish a tunnel in six years, cannot maintain roads that last a decade, and charges 40,000 speeding tickets on a highway it refuses to complete — adding questionable parking tickets on private commercial property to the list is, at this point, almost expected. Almost.
SIIIOCULI — Intelligence. Sovereignty. Awareness. siiioculi.lilxbrxaker.com