A Coquitlam father could face up to $500 in fines for putting his garbage and recycling bins out on the curb a couple of hours too early.

With a four-month-old baby in the house, Dave Deveau said opportunities to do chores such as taking out the garbage don't arise very often. So when his infant son finally fell asleep early Monday morning, he decided to get a head start on collection day, even though it was 3:30 a.m.

"I knew that I could get to the curb for a few minutes because by morning, with feeding him and changing him and just getting him set for the day, I just didn't think it would happen," he said.

Later that day, Deveau was shocked to see notifications informing he'd violated a bylaw by bringing his garbage out so early. Each of his bins had a sticker on it saying a $500 fine was "pending."

"It was really surprising to see the ticket at all mostly because I was really celebrating the fact that I'd achieved getting the garbage out on garbage day because that has not been the case for a number of weeks with the little one," he said. "It took me a while to sort of process what had gone wrong."

The ticket was written at 3:36 a.m. According to Coquitlam bylaws, residents aren't allowed to take out their bins until 5:30 a.m. on collection days in order to avoid attracting bears, cougars and other wildlife in the area.

Deveau said he wasn't aware of the bylaw and called the penalty too harsh on people who are simply trying to work around their busy schedules.

"It feels like zero to 100—or zero to 500 in this case," he said. "Certainly for new parents, for people working shift work, it seems like it could be an impossible thing to actually have our garbage out within that timeframe."

But the City of Coquitlam says the restrictions are necessary to protect both wildlife and residents.

"We have a lot of bears and other wildlife in the city that are attracted to garbage in particular and that garbage sitting unsecure on the cub overnight is the number one attractant for bears in particular into residential garbage," Warriner said. "Once a bear is habituated to garbage, it usually ends up being destroyed, and we don't want to see that in our city."

On Thursday, the municipality posted a photo of a bear rummaging through a garbage bin on Facebook as an example of "why we take enforcement so seriously when it comes to wildlife."

"Because this person put their carts out the night before, this bear is in danger of becoming habituated to garbage…which puts the bear’s life at risk, as well as our public safety," the city wrote.

As of last week, bylaw officers had issued 339 warnings this year and 62 $500 fines.

"I sincerely hope at a city level all of that ticket money is going to some sort of wonderful program," Deveau said. "I guess that information slipped between my fingers and I can't imagine I'm alone."

The new father initially thought the two stickers meant he was being fined a total of $1,000. The city has since said the most he will have to pay is $500 and that he could just get away with a warning.

"The sticker itself notifies that a violation has occurred," said Steffanie Warriner, manager of environment services for the City of Coquitlam. "We do a full review of the file and the circumstances of the incident and then a decision based on the evidence is made on whether to actually proceed with issuing a fine."

It's unclear, however, what criteria are used to decide between a fine and a warning.

Warriner said if a resident faces unique circumstances that make them unable to put out the bins in the allotted timeframe, they should contact the city at 604-927-3500.

"Our ultimate goal is to help people be in compliance," she said. "We don't like issuing fines, it's not our goal, but we really do need everybody following our bylaw because it's very important."

Deveau said he has reached out to city staff and is waiting to hear back, adding that he intends to fight the ticket if a fine is issued.

"There should be some form of process I imagine to try to appeal and that is my intention," he said.

With files from CTV Vancouver's Shannon Paterson