Farmgate: Not all vehicles qualify for a licence sticker refund – Standard Freeholder
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Last week, I went to the Service Ontario office in Alexandria to get the annual stickers for our four vehicles: a car and three pickup trucks.
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I was aware Premier Doug Ford had announced that effective March 13, personal vehicles would no longer require annual registration fees or licence plate stickers, however I was late (as usual) and the stickers should have been bought in February.
I was told as the new law was coming into effect shortly, not to buy the stickers as in April, all fees paid for personal vehicles since March 2020 would be refunded by the provincial government.
My next question was what about the three farm-plated trucks, and here it got interesting. After a brief discussion between the clerks as to what the cut-off weight was, I was told that for farm-plated trucks with a gross vehicle weight of over 3,000 kilograms, the stickers and annual fee is still required. For trucks with a GVW of 3,000 kilograms and under, they are treated as personal vehicles and no fees or stickers are required.
They checked the registration papers for the three (the GVW is listed under the vehicle weight on the right-hand side of the certificate). Our son’s Chevrolet 1500 half-ton and our Ford F250 three-quarter ton both had a GVWs of under 3,000 kilograms, so we just saved $314 a year!
Unfortunately, our Chevy 2500 three-quarter ton service truck weighs just over 3,000 kilograms, so I paid the fee and received its plate sticker.
No one seems to know exactly where the government will make up the $1.1 billion received annually from vehicle registrations. Ford has also promised funds to police departments for licence-plate recognition technology.
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It should make driving in other provinces or south of the border interesting for a while! Vehicles will still have to be registered every year at Service Ontario or at its online site, it just won’t cost anything.
To ensure the fees you paid for vehicle registrations since March 2020 are refunded to you, make sure that your correct, current address is on your vehicle’s registration slip and that all fines are paid up to date.
This law will probably last at least until the next provincial election ( June 2022) is over and then until all vehicles are up to date with their registrations.
Have you noticed that, for the past three or four months, there have been little to no Kellogg’s cereals on the store shelves, especially Corn Flakes and Rice Krispies, their top sellers?
Well here is the answer— and it has nothing to do with supply chain problems.
On Oct. 5, the 1,300 employees who operate Kellogg’s four U.S. plants went on strike. These plants supplied the brand’s cereals in the United States.
To make up the shortage, Kellogg’s has been importing cereals from its plants in Mexico, England, and – you guessed it – Canada, creating a shortage here. The company has had talks with the union heads, however so far there is no resolve and Kellogg’s is suing the union to allow replacement workers and supply trucks into its American plants.
So, until this dispute is over, Kellogg’s cereals will be in short supply on the grocers’ shelves— or not available at all. They do occasionally appear.
In January I found five boxes on the shelf in an Alexandria store. Two came home with me, leaving three for other shoppers.
