Blue plate versus green plate, legal question

[SlyDude]

Sorry if this has been posted/answered before... I'm new to this forum. I did search and didn't find what I was looking for.

I got back into trail riding last year. My wife is interested in joining me on some rides. I have a dualsport (Honda CRF250 Rally). I have my M2 and will be looking to get my M eventually. I ride about 50-50, probably a bit more road than trail.
My wife is only interested in trail riding at this time. She is not ruling out (country) road riding in the future.

I have seen some posts indicating MTO can be difficult to deal with for transfering a street legal bike from green plated to blue plated (we're considering the CRF250L or Suzuki DR200S for my wife, both are street legal dualsports). We're in a quandry as to whether to plate the bike green or blue.

If green she'd be good to go right away with just her G license. If blue, I'm assuming that she would need some form of M license to drive it, even in trails, since because it is blue plated it must meet the highway traffic act, not the off-road act.
Is this correct???

Any help would be appreciated. If it was legal for her to ride a blue plated motorcycle in trails only with her G license that would be ideal (I don't mind the extra yearly fee, compared to the one time fee of green plate). That way if she ever wants to give the road a try in the future the bike would be good to go, she'd just need to work on getting her M license.

Thanks.

 

[slowe1]

Legally she can ride the bike off road with a blue plate, insurance, and OFTR membership. You may want a conversation with your insurance company though. I think the cost will be higher but I still don't think the off road without an M would be a problem.

 

[Iwannaride]

FYI I recently had a green plated CRF250l that I blue plated to sell after signing an affidavit and filing out a form at the mto confirming the bike was manufactured and sold in Canada as street legal. No big deal. You would need the bike to pass a safety check as well.

 

[SlyDude]

Thanks for the responses. I did call ServiceOntario and they also indicated that a safety was pretty much all that was required to convert a green plate to blue plate on a motorcycle as long as the motorcycle was street legal in terms of lights...
I also have a call in to a MTO enforcement officer about the legality of a non-M licensed rider riding a blue plated motorcycle off-road.
Will see what they say about that, but leaning towards green plating at this time.

 

[zedro]

You only need a road license for the road, it has nothing to do with the bike registration. That being said, an officer could give you a hard time, but thats the actual law.

 

[SimonGagne]

Hi,
I just bought a CRF250L and went thru the same thinking. I wanted to blue plate it for future road use, but only to use it on trail for the time being. But to get a blue plate, you need insurance, and since I had no M license, no insurance company wanted to provide only off road insurance on a blue plated bike (I even have several other green plated bikes with insurance). In fact, most companies were willing to provide offroad ins. only if I sent a copy of the registration to prove that the bike was green plated.

So yes, you don't need a license to drive blue plated bike off road, but if you follow the process, you kinda need one at the first step to get insurance. Some might know a way to get around the license to get insurance but I have tried really hard with no success.

So I ended up getting a M license and a road insurance, then blue plate the bike. You can always switch back from green to blue, but for me, it was only couple 100's $ less to go this way, I felt it was not worth the time and hassle...

Simon