Justice committee  It's a detention.

Justice committee  We'll discuss that perhaps further, but there may be circumstances where you don't want that person right there: “Come over here where you're away from traffic; accompany me over there”, to do that sort of thing. We'll think about that wording, but it's certainly not the intentio

Justice committee  I would guess the defence counsel, when they come here, will not be big fans of this particular legislation. We've been struggling with the issue of evidence to the contrary, and drugs. Basically, in 1999 a parliamentary committee, which reviewed all of the impaired driving law

Justice committee  The legislation in proposed paragraph 254(2)(a) allows the officer to require the person to perform forthwith the physical coordination test, and “forthwith” basically means right there at the side of the road. It does not allow him to require the person to accompany him to the s

Justice committee  Not really. We have a problem, as you mentioned, with concentration. We already discussed it. Actually, the effects of different drugs vary so much from one individual to another that we cannot tell what quantity will... I hope that you will put the same questions to the drug re

Justice committee  In actual fact, the answer is no. I think that drug recognition experts will testify before you, at which time they will be able to give you a much more definite answer. The problem is that there are seven families of drugs. There are thousands of drugs, many of which are illega

Justice committee  I don't see how that would be possible. You would need to be admitted into the provincial program, and I don't think the province would accept someone with a drug-abuse problem into an alcohol-abuse program. Moreover, when you take the wheel, there's no screening test to determin

Justice committee  Perhaps I can make one comment. You said that barely 40% result in convictions. The numbers I've seen are higher than that. A lot of cases don't go to trial; the person pleads guilty. So maybe it's only 40% of those going to trial. As for what in this bill will bring that numb

Justice committee  Since this is current practice in the United States, we consulted the International Association of Chiefs of Police about the tests we can use to screen for different drugs. I can't imagine what problem asking someone to track a light in a fairly dark room could possibly cause.

Justice committee  We can already ask for a warrant to identify drugs and alcohol. The problem lies in the fact that we normally do not have many grounds on which to request that warrant. Generally, we use a warrant to screen for alcohol, but that is already there. We do not need all these tests wh

Justice committee  First of all, I must make it clear that the person must have failed the roadside tests in order to be asked to come to the police station and undergo a breath analysis or a drug recognition expert's tests. If this person had taken a drug that makes him or her a better driver, the

Justice committee  At first, I would say that section 253.1 was the model that came out of the standing committee the last time, except for those changes that I mentioned we thought were improvements, particularly tying it in with the prohibitions. You raise an extremely interesting point regardin

Justice committee  I'm thinking of anecdotal evidence only. Evan, I believe, keeps track of the reports from the DRE-trained officers. Before I pass it over to him, you asked about standard field sobriety testing being tested in the courts. Some of the provinces, certainly Manitoba, have regulatio

Justice committee  Thus far the defence lawyers have the problem that their clients voluntarily participated, which makes it a little more difficult to raise the challenge.

Justice committee  I have to apologize to the committee. I don't believe this provision overrides the provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which requires the police to go through a number of other things before they apply that. I'll have to check that with our youth criminal justice expert