About Canary
Keeping mobility parking available for the people who need it
Our mission is to reduce misuse, improve access, and help make mobility parking fairer for the people who rely on it.
Our approach
Canary was built to change behaviour.
Canary works with businesses and facilities across Aotearoa to reduce the misuse of mobility parking and make those spaces more reliable for the people who use them.
We use monitored parking, manual review and a clear breach process to deal with misuse consistently. Canary also takes care of the communication that follows, so businesses aren’t left managing complaints or confronting drivers themselves.
The bigger goal is to make misuse less common over time. If Canary is doing its job properly, fewer people need to be reminded in the first place.
Hear it from Tim
Tim explains why Canary exists, what the organisation is trying to change, and where he hopes it ends up.
Our story
Where Canary started
We’ve all seen mobility parks being used by people who don’t appear to need them. It’s easy to dismiss that as a small thing, but for someone who relies on those spaces, finding one unavailable can have a real impact on their day.
Canary grew out of a problem Tim Andrews had been hearing about for years.
Through more than two decades of involvement with Arthritis New Zealand, one frustration kept coming up: mobility parks were often unavailable when people genuinely needed them.
It wasn’t a new issue, and another sign in the car park wasn’t going to solve it.
Canary came from asking what might happen if misuse was monitored consistently, reviewed properly, and managed by a team set up to deal with the follow-up. That idea became the foundation for Canary.
A practical response to a problem people had been putting up with for a long time.
Giving back
Turning paid breaches into something useful
Canary’s model puts part of every paid breach back into the community.
For every breach that is paid, a donation goes directly to one of Canary’s charitable partners.
Those contributions have supported organisations working across accessibility, disability support, health and local community programmes.
The idea is pretty simple: if a breach has happened and been paid, some good should come from it.
- Donated so far
- $134,450
- Parks monitored
- 42
- Charities supported
- 6
What that support can look like
Canary’s contributions have helped fund accessibility initiatives, peer support, community programmes and local events through its partner organisations.
The end goal?To be redundant.
Explore the charities we work with to make sure mobility parking is there for the people who need it.