Originally Posted by dash1729

It is defined as follows in Ontario law: 'No person shall engage in an activity or use any device or material for the purpose of evading, obstructing or interfering with the effective operation of an electronic toll system.' What that means, in practice, will of course depend on the interpretation of the Ontario courts. Especially because I don't live in Ontario, I don't want to be in a position where the Ontario courts get to make that judgment call. I want to stay well outside the range of behavior that might be labelled as 'fare evasion' (or any other criminal act), not engaging in behavior that leaves it up to the courts to make a difficult judgment call.



If, per your profile, you are from Georgia, that is probably too far away to be part of any reciprocal agreements with Ontario. Ontario has reciprocal agreements with Michigan and New York to collect tolls, but probably not with Georgia, which doesn't border Ontario and isn't close to bordering Ontario. That is why Georgia, as a state, didn't take any action.

However the amount you owe is high enough that 407ETR might decide, after one form of collection fails, to pursue another form. This means that even if there are no police or immigration consequences, they can pursue a civil lawsuit or a report to a collection agency. For a single unpaid toll of $50 I don't see them bothering with a lawsuit. For thousands of dollars they might do so at any time up to the expiration of the statute of limitations.

In my own case, the biggest practical concern is I don't want an unpaid toll falling through the cracks and being reported to a collection agency. My experience is that creditors are actually sometimes more aggressive in threatening or taking collection action for small debts rather than large debts. For large debts they will work with you for awhile to see if you will pay. For small debts it isn't worth their trouble to try to work with you, so they just sent it to collections sooner rather than later to see if anything can be collected.