louisworld.ca

Apparently, it’s been decided. After sometime of public consultation, on August 18th 2006, the SAAQ, the government body in charge of vehicles (somewhat equivalent to the DMV) has decided to go ahead with it’s plan to increase fees for drivers license but especially for motorcycles registration. And it’s even worse than the proposed plan (which you can look at the figures on this blog entry from April (entry is in French but everyone can read a table with numbers right?).

The plan is to spread the increase over 3 years starting in 2008. There are small increases on drivers license for either car driver but there will be additionnal fees to have your motorcycles license! This means that right now, my driver’s license which is costing me $43 for both car and bike will be $91 in 2008 ($58+$38), $124 in 2009 ($72+$52), $152 in 2010 ($86+$66). But that’s just half of it! Wait for the registration fees. The SAAQ is definitely waging a war against sportbikes!

For a car, the total fee hike is driving (no pun intended) the fee from $255 right now to $262 in 2010. We can practically say that there is no hike there. For the bikes, they are split in 3 categories: 0 to 125cc, 126 to 400 cc and 400cc and higher. 0 to 125cc bikes will go from $175 in 2006 to $242 in 2010. 126cc to 400cc from $250 now to $373 in 2010. 400cc and above bikes are then split into 2 categories: regular and sport. Still curious as to what criterias qualify a bike a sportbike. A regular bike of above 400cc at this moment is costing $320 in registration fees. In 2008 this will go to $416, then to $518 in 2009 and $627 in 2010. Almost twice the price.

It is much much worse for sportbikes… Right now it is costing the same price of $320. In 2008 the price jump $667 (already doubles!), then $1030 in 2009 (yep, 3 times the current rate) and $1410 in 2010.

I knew this was coming but now that it is official I admit that I’m speechless. I guess I’ll provide more information on my reaction at a later date.

(All prices are in Canadian dollars).

Complete tables of figures (only in French sorry), can be found on the SAAQ press release.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 at 7:44 and is filed under Moto. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.