Administrative Penalties

Administrative penalties are financial penalties imposed on a person or a business for non-compliance with a regulatory requirement.  Administrative penalties may be an appropriate response to non-compliance where a regulated party contravened a regulatory requirement, and:

• an advisory, warning or violation ticket does not adequately reflect the severity of the contravention
• an order or administrative sanction is not appropriate for the circumstances or would cause undue hardship
• the time and cost of prosecution is not in the public interest, or
• it is appropriate to recover the financial benefit the regulated party received as a result of the non-compliance or to recover the costs to government of remediating damage to Crown resources.

Maximum penalty amounts are prescribed  by regulation, ranging from $2,000 to $75,000. The statutory decision makers who issue the penalties consider all mitigating and aggravating circumstances of the non-compliance.

Read the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy's Administrative Penalties Fact Sheet (PDF, 207KB).