The Labour Relations Board is hearing a dispute between the city of Montreal and the union of police officers, the Police Brotherhood.
The city claims union brass have ordered officers on traffic duty to scale back the number of tickets they hand out, and says the proof is in the statistics.
Thursday morning Montreal Police Chief Inspector Eric Lalonde, who is responsible for managing road safety, testified about the number of tickets handed out in the fall in recent years.
He said that from Sept. 22 to Nov. 2 of 2014 there was a 37 percent drop in the number of tickets handed out compared to last year, and a 32 percent decrease compared to the average over the past three years.
That amounts to 33,000 fewer tickets.
Yves Francoeur, the president of the Police Brotherhood, said that while the number of tickets being handed out has dropped nobody gave an order to do so.
"There was no word, there was no directive from the union. We're going to have to examine the data that we received this morning, but for sure there is a good explanation," said Francoeur.
He believes the number of tickets issued has decreased because there has been an increase in the number of officers directing traffic at construction sites.
The city of Montreal is claiming that overall it is owed $13 million.
The labour dispute comes as police forces and other municipal workers fight with city officials and provincial legislators over Bill 3, which would see individual police officers making higher contributions to their pension plans.
