Fougere discusses school zone speeding tickets, Sir John A. Macdonald statue

The City of Regina is considering options to refund some photo radar speeding tickets issued during the COVID-19 health crisis.

Since the pandemic began in March, 6,000 tickets have been given out via photo radar in school zones — even though schools have been closed.

By contrast, Saskatoon doesn’t hand out those same tickets when school is out.

Regina Mayor Michael Fougere told the Greg Morgan Morning Show on Thursday why the cities handle it so differently.

“They have a different bylaw … In Saskatoon, they don’t have any compliance issues when school is off in the summertime,” he said.

Regina’s school zone speed limits are in effect throughout the year.

Now, Regina is now thinking about refunding the tickets. However, Fougere said it’s not as easy as just giving the money back.

“The province gets 25 per cent of the revenue off the top, and we split the rest of it with a regional organization for safety. So in order for us to return any money, we have to talk to the province and SGI to see if they would do that,” he explained.

Sir John A. Macdonald statue under review

Fougere also shared his thoughts on the future of the statue in Victoria Park of Canada’s first prime minister.

The mayor thinks it will take some time to make a concrete decision.

“We’re going to have some public consultation with our Indigenous community, but also the wider, general public to see what they think about that,” he said.

There are multiple options to consider.

“We could leave it the way it is, we could have a plaque that talks about the good and bad things the former prime minister did, we (could) remove it (or) we (could) put it in a museum somewhere,” Fougere said.