County of Brant Council received a detailed update on the municipality’s automated speed enforcement (ASE) program during a special meeting held on Monday, September 29, 2025.
The report, prepared by Halie Gilmore, the County’s Project Manager of Corporate Strategy, was presented to council after the provincial government announced earlier in the week that it planned to introduce legislation to prohibit the use of ASE cameras this fall.
Following the announcement, the County released a statement saying that while staff will review Ford’s proposed legislation once it’s introduced, its two ASE cameras, located on Silver Street in Paris (directly in front of North Ward Elementary School) and on Beverly Street West in St. George (near the St. George Children’s Centre and the St. George-German Public School) will remain active for the time being.
The County officially launched its ASE program earlier this year under the Brant Safe Streets Strategy to reduce speeding, change driver behaviour and improve overall road safety.
Besides the amount of time and effort that staff have put into the program, the county has spent approximately $141,000 on ASE devices, installation and signage.
According to the report, between 2019 and 2025, County staff received more than 725 comments regarding speeding and aggressive driving behaviour, noting that on average, speeding concerns account for 60 to 80 per cent of all traffic-related comments.
Gilmore said that although many residents have expressed their support for the program, several misconceptions about its purpose and how it works continue to pop up.
She said that while some people think the ASEs are a “tax grab,” the County’s primary goal is to improve road safety over time, not to generate money.
Designed to be revenue neutral, the ASE program uses its revenue to cover operating and maintenance costs without relying on taxpayer funding. To support this, the County established the Road Safety Reserve Fund Policy in June 2025, creating an accountable and transparent way to expand the program, and pay for the engineered traffic safety improvements that were recently outlined by the Premier rather than using additional taxpayer dollars.
As far as if tickets are being issued for drivers going over even just 1 km, Gilmore said that’s not the case and the County has set a reasonable, but confidential, threshold for violation.
Gilmore added that when designing and implementing the program, the County focused on introducing ASEs incrementally, prioritized school zones and adopted a 40 km/h speed limit rather than 30 km/h.
While the St. George camera only recently went live on September 15, the Paris camera has been operational since February 3, 2025, and Gilmore said that its data has already shown that there’s been a measurable reduction in speeding since its installation eight months ago.
For example, last September, before the Silver Street camera was in place, a speed board recorded 20,196 vehicles passing through the area over the course of the month. Of those, 12,908 were speeding, meaning 64 per cent of drivers were over the limit. The camera also found that the average speed was 43.5 km/h, with some vehicles reaching up to 100 km/h on a stretch of road where the speed limit is 40 km/h.
As of August 2025, the same camera recorded 15,184 vehicles passing through the area. Of those, 5,242 were speeding, meaning around 35 per cent of drivers were over the posted speed limit. The camera also found that the average speed was 38.6 km/h, with some vehicles reaching up to 67 km/h.
In regards to questions that have come up about appealing the tickets given out through ASE program, Gilmore said that so far, the County has processed 242 screening reviews and conducted 19 hearings from February 3 to August 21.
“We also have the County’s Guidelines for Review process, and so we just wanted to flag that if there was ever a penalty order that was causing undue hardship, we have a plan in place so individuals can submit their appeal and supporting documentation to extend their timeline or to create a payment plan in alignment with with their penalty,” she added.
When it comes to the financial impacts of the ASE, Gilmore said that it’s constantly evolving but provided the following information with respect to program costs and expenses over the past eight months:
- Total fines collected: $595,174
- Minus staffing costs: $82,000
- Minus software costs: $83,030
- Minus victim surcharge (paid tickets): 117,141
- Minus Ministry of Transportation (MTO) search fee: $66,330
- Minus administration costs: $16,606
- Total program surplus expected as of August 31, 2025: $230,067
“The key thing to note is that any program surplus, as I mentioned, would be diverted to the Road Safety Reserve Fund, and that fund would be reinvested into road safety initiatives like the Burtch Street roundabout that’s proposed for 2027,” said Gilmore.
The County’s Project Manager of Corporate Strategy said that overall, the ASE program has had a significantly positive impact in the County of Brant.
Following the presentation, Councillor Steve Howes said he recently heard from a constituent who felt that a drop from an average speed of 43.5 km/h to 38.6 km/h wasn’t all that significant. He then asked Gilmore to explain what that decrease actually represents.
“In the grand scheme of things, five kilometres doesn’t seem like a lot, but when we look at the data, we can see that the reduction in terms of it being a fatal accident, or the actual reaction time that people have, is quite considerable” responded Gilmore. “…Even a small reduction in speed can really increase the chance of a vulnerable road user surviving an accident.”
Councillor Jennifer Kyle said that if the province goes through with the ban, they will have to provide some clarity as far as what to do with roads that qualify as community safety zones, but where the municipality can’t implement other traffic calming measures.
“This is a particular tool that is most useful in places like Hwy. 5 in St. George,” she said. “It’s an arterial road where we can’t really put in speed bumps, or some of those other physical traffic calming barriers. I think if they [the province] are going to go ahead with this ban, that’s something we’re going to need some clarity on.”
Councillor John Bell later asked whether the County of Brant OPP Detachment Board could also write a letter to the province in support of the ASEs, noting that the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, recently expressed support for them, and that Jason McTaggart, Acting Inspector for the Brant OPP also said at the last council meeting that ASEs help free up police resources.
Councillor David Miller also said that it was interesting the province would call the ASE program a “money grab” considering it was also getting “a nice chunk of change through the victim surcharge and the MTO search fee” and that the province set the fine amount per kilometre.
Oakley later brought up the financial impact on the taxpayers if they were to get rid of the ASEs.
“In order to get as much of a speed reduction as you can in a school zone from physical infrastructure changes like bollards, curb extensions, speed bumps, etc., you’re roughly looking at project costs in and around $400,000 per kilometre,” he said. “You need roughly three quarters of a kilometre to cover a school zone and we have 31 schools in the County now. …Presuming we would be able to do it in front of every school, you’re talking about roughly $15 million that is now going to go to the taxpayer to pay for that.”
Following some further discussion, Council unanimously voted to oppose Ford’s proposed ban on ASEs, to urge the province to review the effectiveness of ASE and to forward the report, along with a letter to the Office of the Premier Doug Ford; Prabmeet Sarkaria, the Minister of Transportation; Will Bouma, MPP for Brantford-Brant; Brian Riddell, MPP for Cambridge; Ernie Hardeman, MPP for Oxford; and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO).
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
