
THE BENEFITS TO MEMBERSHIP
There are multiple benefits to joining the MCMC. First and foremost is knowing your rights and understanding how the law pertains to you as an individual as well as a motorcycle club. While this is in no way meant to portray every badge in a uniform as abusive, through today’s world of social media, it has become quite common to view where law enforcement has over stepped their boundaries and crossed the line into unwarranted harassment of both rider and clubs.
The MCMC is designed to keep all clubs and riders up to date on the latest Provincial and Federal laws that can have a direct/indirect effect on the motorcycle community and how we can best respond to them in the event someone or group come across a situation where they experience a flagrant misuse of the law or are being unlawfully detained for no other reason than they just happen to be on two wheels. In many cases riders who have been check stopped by law enforcement have been misled on newer laws that have been implemented and due to the individuals ignorance of it (Sorry but that is still no excuse!) could not respond accordingly to their situation. The MCMC will retain legal counsel to educate the various clubs and their members on new laws/ existing laws and how we can legally and respectfully respond without getting ourselves into unnecessary trouble.
Legal counsel will also be available to represent the MC community as a whole when it comes to addressing laws in general that tend to target and directly affect the motorcycling community. Legal counsel will also be available to take on representation of the riders within the MCMC in court procedures in the event of unwarranted tickets distributed to a group or pack of riders where law has been flagrantly misapplied. Or in some instances, an abuse of the process has taken place whereby tickets have been issued to the group/individuals that does not fall within the confines of the written laws but rather left to the officers own interpretation. Past experiences have demonstrated that quite often tickets have been written more as a form of intimidation rather than substantiated on their own merit. If there is no law to support the offence than no offence has actually occurred. Laws cannot simply be written on the side of the road! If you were caught speeding and your guilty, you can choose to fight that ticket and hope for the best outcome. But the MCMC is not set up to contest each and every traffic violation brought on by membership. You are responsible for legitimate traffic infractions. Even when they may seem questionable. The MCMC is geared more towards challenging the abuse of the highway traffic act and unnecessary harassment of the motorcycle community. For example, if a pack of riders was pulled over and most but not all were issued speeding tickets it is known that radar could not have locked onto all of them at once. In such a case to write up the tickets would be a form of unnecessary harassment and would be contested by the MCMC in order to establish a precedent so that the process is not abused again in the future. The legal counsel, however, will not be available to individuals who actually break the law of their own accord. In that case you are on your own.
Other benefits to the MCMC are the comrade and fellowship of meeting the various clubs. It gives everyone an opportunity to get to know you and what your club is about. Through those introductions it builds a base of community support whereby each clubs can bring their own ride schedules and planned events to present to the other clubs. Again these are not to promote “Supporting” any one club but rather a community of clubs that lend support to one another for the sake of unity.
Finally it is an opportunity to dispel the stigma and myths that a media driven society can place on Clubs via misleading and at times outright false information. Motorcycle/Ride clubs are some of the biggest charity driven and organizers when it comes to pulling together for the benefit of others. Together we can dispel the negative myths by our actions.