Bill C-32 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (impaired driving) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Criminal Code
(a) to create an offence of operating a motor vehicle while in possession of a controlled substance as defined in subsection 2(1) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act;
(b) to authorize specially trained peace officers to conduct tests to determine whether a person is impaired by a drug or a combination of alcohol and a drug;
(c) to authorize the taking of bodily fluids to test for the presence of alcohol or a drug;
(d) to create an offence of operating a motor vehicle with a concentration of alcohol in the blood that exceeds 80 mg of alcohol in 100 mL of blood and causing bodily harm or death to another person;
(e) to clarify what evidence a person accused of driving with a concentration of alcohol in the blood that exceeds 80 mg of alcohol in 100 mL of blood can introduce to raise a doubt that they were not committing the offence;
(f) to create an offence of refusing to provide a breath sample when the accused knows or ought to know that the accused’s operation of a motor vehicle caused an accident resulting in bodily harm to another person or death; and
(g) to increase the penalties for impaired driving.
The enactment also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

Criminal Code

[Chuck Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

moved that Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (impaired driving) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-32, an act to amend the Criminal Code and to make consequential amendments to other acts.

The bill would help bring Canada's impaired driving laws into the 21st century and would greatly assist the police in their efforts to investigate impaired driving incidents and the Crown in its prosecutions of alleged offenders.

I know all members recognize that impaired driving remains the single criminal offence that is most likely to result in the death or injury of Canadians. If passed, this legislation will make an immeasurable contribution to the safety of all Canadians. Therefore, I trust that all parties will support the legislation and that we can cooperate so that these needed changes can be considered by the standing committee expeditiously.

I can assure all members that the government is open to consideration of any improvements that the committee can suggest, after hearing from stakeholders, to make the bill even more effective in achieving its goals.

The bill has three main components.

First, it would give police officers the tools they need to investigate drug impaired driving.

Second, it would make changes that reflect the great advances made in breathalyzer technology since Parliament first introduced breath testing almost 40 years ago.

Third, it would introduce new offences and increase penalties for existing offences.

Many members of the House are familiar with the drug impaired provisions of the bill. They are virtually identical to the provisions of Bill C-16, which was introduced in an earlier Parliament. That bill was reviewed and amended in committee and reported unanimously with amendments by the committee. However, it died on the order paper.

There is no question that police and prosecutors are eagerly awaiting the passage of those changes.

I will therefore confine my remarks to the new provisions in Bill C-32 so that members will understand what motivated the government to bring these amendments forward.

Probably the most important change in this bill is the proposal to ensure that only scientifically valid defences can be used where a person is accused of driving with a concentration of alcohol exceeding 80 milligrams in 100 millilitres of blood. This is known as driving over 80.

Parliament first enacted an alcohol driving offence in 1921. Our current Criminal Code, section 253, subsection (a), offence of impaired driving, was enacted in 1951. It has been known for more than 50 years that a person with more than 80 milligrams of alcohol in their system is a danger to himself or herself and also to other users of the road.

A person with a blood alcohol concentration of 90 is estimated by the U.S. Department of Transportation to be at least 11 times as likely to be involved in a fatal accident as a sober driver. Above that level, the risk increases exponentially. At a blood alcohol level of 125, for example, a person is at least 29 times as likely to be involved in a fatal collision.

While recognizing the risk of collisions with escalating blood alcohol concentrations, the problem has always been how to prove the concentration. Determining BAC can be done by analyzing blood. However, obtaining a blood sample is often seen as intrusive and it can take a long time to complete the blood analysis, during which time the accused does not know whether a charge will be laid.

The problems with blood analysis were overcome in the 1950s with the invention of Borkenstein Breathalyzer, which converted alcohol in breath to alcohol in blood in a reliable, scientifically valid process.

Parliament recognized the risk of blood alcohol concentration that exceeded 80 when it passed, in 1969, legislation making it an offence to drive with that much alcohol or more in a person's system. It is a peculiarity of the law that it can only be proven by making the person provide the evidence that can be used against him or her in court. Accordingly Parliament made it an offence to refuse to provide the breath sample on an improved instrument.

Advances in technology made it possible to measure the BAC at roadside, so Parliament provided for the use of a roadside screening device in 1979. These screeners indicate that a person has failed but do not give a precise BAC for use in court. They do provide the police with grounds to demand the approved instrument test. The results from the approved instrument are admissible in court.

Again, it is an offence not to provide the breath sample on an approved screening device and it is an offence not to provide the breath sample on an approved instrument. The courts have recognized the unique nature of this law and they have upheld its constitutionality as a reasonable limit on the charter right against unreasonable search and seizure, a limit that is justified by the horrendous toll caused by drunk drivers.

Therefore, by 1979 Parliament had established a two-step process for determining whether a driver was over 80. It appears simple. A reasonable suspicion of alcohol in the driver leads to a roadside approved device screening test which, if failed, leads to an approved instrument test, in which over 80 is proven by filing the certificate of the qualified technician in court.

However, as all members are likely aware, impaired driving, and in particular over-80 cases, have become among the most complex cases to prove under the Criminal Code. It seems that every word and every comma in every section has been litigated. Anyone who doubts how complicated the law has become need only pick up Martin's Annual Criminal Code. The 2007 edition has 12 pages of legislative text and annotations for the 13 sections dealing with murder, manslaughter and infanticide. Martin's has 62 pages of legislated text and annotations for the nine sections dealing with impaired driving.

Subsection 253(b) over-80 cases take up a grossly disproportionate amount of provincial court trial time. Often this is the sole charge, as there is no evidence of erratic driving and there are few signs of impairment. If the defence can raise a reasonable doubt as to the BAC at the time of testing being equal to the BAC at the time of driving, the prosecution will virtually never have other evidence to prove that the person was over 80 at the time of driving.

When Parliament first adopted breath testing legislation in 1969, the operator had to perform a series of tests to ensure the approved instrument was calibrated properly and had to read a needle to obtain a reading, which was recorded manually. Clearly, there were opportunities for operator error and even erroneous transcription of the BAC.

Therefore, Parliament provided that the BAC reading is, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, deemed to be the BAC at the time of driving. Unfortunately, even for a new generation of approved instruments that give digital readings, have automated internal checks and give a printout of the internal process, the courts have interpreted evidence to the contrary to include evidence given by the accused that he only had a small quantity of alcohol to drink, typically “two beer”. This has become known as the two-beer defence.

The defence then calls a toxicologist to estimate the defendant's BAC based on the accused's testimony regarding consumption of alcohol, time elapsed, food consumption, et cetera. Essentially, the accused is saying that regardless of the BAC at the time of testing, his or her BAC while driving could not have been over 80 given the small amount of alcohol consumed.

The accused does not have to account for the BAC reading on the approved instrument at the police station. The courts, unless they reject totally the accused's evidence, hold that the presumption that the BAC at testing equals the BAC at the time of driving is defeated. Without this presumption, the prosecution does not have evidence to prove the over-80 offence. The defendant is acquitted for a lack of evidence showing the illegal BAC at the time of driving.

The Supreme Court considered evidence to the contrary in December 2005, where the accused, who had blown .092, testified that he had only two large beer. Although the conviction was restored, the decision turned solely on the credibility of the accused and whether the judge had properly considered the evidence as a whole.

The majority found, at paragraph 43, that:

The judge also erred when she stated that the credibility of the accused and his witnesses could be assessed in light of the results of the breathalyzer tests before applying the presumption.

Consequently, the Supreme Court has effectively found that the results of a breath test can be disregarded by the trial judge and the accused found not guilty without any evidence whatsoever that the machine has malfunctioned, at least for the “presumption of accuracy for the qualified technician's certificate”. Even if the court is suspicious of the accused's evidence, the presumption is lost because the accused only has to meet the test of raising any evidence to the contrary.

Frankly, this may be a misunderstanding of what “evidence to the contrary” was intended by Parliament to be. Parliament passed the breathalyzer law in 1969, so the calculation of BAC would be done by the approved instrument, which takes the guesswork out of the equation provided the approved instrument is functioning properly, the operator uses it properly and the results are properly recorded.

The court's interpretation may have been justified when the technology was such that operator error could affect it and there would be no direct evidence of this. Therefore, it is very much a defence that reflects the weaknesses of technology in use some 40 years ago. It was not, I believe, Parliament's intention that evidence to the contrary should be simply speculation about what an accused BAC might have been.

Given today's state of technology, evidence to the contrary must be direct evidence that the machine either did not operate properly or was not operated properly. If there is no such evidence, then the BAC produced by the machine should be accepted.

The accused may still be acquitted if he or she can show that they could have been under 80 at the time driving without contradicting the BAC results on the approved instrument at the police station. This could happen if, for example, the person downed several drinks and was arrested before the alcohol was absorbed. It could also occur that after driving, but before testing, the person consumed alcohol and it was absorbed by the time the approved instrument test was taken.

The fundamental question for Parliament is whether it can trust the BAC readings produced by the approved instruments. Fortunately, advances in technology ensure that the accused receives full disclosure of more modern approved evidence tests through the printout of the internal operations of the equipment.

In March of last year, the justice department commissioned from Mr. Brian Hodgson, a forensic toxicologist and the chair of the alcohol test committee of the Canadian Society of Forensic Science, a report on the validity of breath testing. I will be happy to provide a copy of this report to any member who wishes it. I trust that Mr. Hodgson will be called as a witness by the standing committee if we send the bill for review after second reading.

Let me summarize his paper this way. He wrote that the Breathalyzer is entirely manually operated and therefore the reliability is vulnerable to human error. The test results are handwritten by the operator and vulnerable to transcription error. The advanced instruments have preprogrammed functions that minimize human operator error. He continued, saying that, for example, when electrical power is first turned on, all instruments must reach a specified operating temperature and the operator can then proceed with the testing of the subject. With the Breathalyzer, this function is the responsibility of the operator. The advanced instruments will not operate until the specified temperature is reached and have preprogrammed safety checks that will signal problems by means of error messages and will abort the testing procedure.

These approved instruments are highly sophisticated and have to pass a rigorous evaluation process before the alcohol test committee recommends that they be listed as approved instruments under the Criminal Code for use in the courts. One does not buy these instruments off the shelf at Wal-Mart. Perhaps the standing committee can arrange to have a demonstration of the older instruments and the new instruments so they will be better able to appreciate the differences.

In light of this science and the developments with the approved instruments, it is unfortunate that our courts have failed to reflect in their jurisprudence the evolution of the technology. Ignoring the BAC produced by one of the modern approved instruments and substituting for its accurate, scientific analysis of breath alcohol a calculation based on the testimony of the accused is deeply discouraging to the police and prosecutors, who have done everything that Parliament has prescribed.

As far back as 1986, the alcohol test committee expressed concern over the courts accepting testimony that effectively contradicted the approved instrument. In 1999, evidence to the contrary was discussed during the special hearings of the standing committee regarding impaired driving.

The committee wrote:

The Committee understands the frustration expressed by justice system personnel over time-consuming defenses that, at least on the surface, may appear frivolous. However, given that the accused would have no effective means of checking the accuracy of a breath analysis machine, the Committee agrees that limiting the interpretation of “evidence to the contrary” in such a manner as recommended could effectively amount to the creation of an absolute liability criminal offence. Such a result would run the risk of interfering with an accused person's rights guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In present circumstances, therefore, the Committee does not support amendments to the Criminal Code that would limit the interpretation of “evidence to the contrary”.

Circumstances certainly have changed. We now have modern technology that not only is designed to eliminate operator error but also prints out the results of its internal diagnostic checks that ensure it is operating accurately. The accused receives a copy of that printout and can make full answer in defence.

It is just as unacceptable to ignore the approved instrument BAC reading in favour of the testimony of the defendant and his or her friends as it would be for a court to ignore DNA found on the victim that analysis shows comes from the accused because he or she and a few friends testified that the accused was not at the scene of the crime, with no explanation as to how the DNA happened to be there.

As MADD Canada's CEO Andrew Murie said in a press release calling for rapid passage of this bill:

Canada appears to be the only country that throws out the results of the evidentiary breath and blood samples based on the unsubstantiated, self-serving testimony of an accused impaired driver. We are very pleased to see the government limit these challenges.

I believe members will agree that a person who has been drinking is unlikely to have an exact recollection of the amount of alcohol he or she consumed and it is appropriate that the blood alcohol content of the driver be established by a scientifically validated instrument that gives an exact reading rather than by a calculation based on such a shaky foundation.

The amendments that we are proposing abolish the loose, undefined concept of “evidence to the contrary” and list the actual scientifically valid offences that an accused can bring forward.

We are also reflecting in Bill C-32 the advances in technology by reducing from 15 minutes to three minutes the time required between the two required breath tests. The old breathalyzers required at least 10 minutes between tests for the operator to set the instrument back up so that it was ready for another test. The new instruments are ready in a matter of minutes and they signal to the operator that they are ready to proceed.

Although there are other technical changes in the bill, I wish to conclude my remarks by discussing the changes in the offences and the new punishments.

The Criminal Code currently provides for higher maximum penalties for impaired driving causing death and impaired driving causing bodily harm. These higher penalties do not apply to refusal in over-80 offences, so unless there is also a conviction for causing bodily harm or death arising from the incident, a lower maximum penalty applies.

While evidence of BAC is not a prerequisite in order to prove the charge of impaired driving causing death or bodily harm, it is admissible in court. There is, therefore, an incentive for the accused to refuse to provide a sample in a case involving injury or death, because the maximum penalty for a refusal is five years.

Even if it is admitted, the BAC reading is not necessarily sufficient to prove the offender was impaired. The Crown has to call a toxicologist to establish, as I have said, what has been known for more than 50 years, namely, that a person who is over 80 is impaired. Virtually all toxicologists agree that at 100 milligrams each person's ability to operate a vehicle is impaired.

We propose to eliminate this incentive to refuse by making a person who is over 80 and is the cause of a collision resulting in death or bodily harm, or who refuses to provide a breath sample knowing of the death or bodily harm, subject to the same penalties as the driver who, while impaired by alcohol or a drug, caused a death or bodily harm.

As for the penalties for impaired driving where there is no death or injury, the government believes they do not adequately reflect the seriousness of this offence. We are proposing to raise the minimum fine for a first offence to $1,000. When combined with the prohibitions on driving, provincial licence suspensions and higher insurance costs, this should be enough to convince the person not to commit the offence again.

However, for those who do commit another offence, we propose that they be subject to imprisonment for a minimum 30 days on a second offence instead of the current 14 days. For a third offence, we propose 120 days rather than the current 90 days' imprisonment.

I am indeed pleased to recommend to the House that it give second reading to Bill C-32. I urge all members to support it.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thought my Conservative colleague's speech was very interesting. However, I would like to ask him some questions.

He mentioned and emphasized that there are cases where an impaired driver of a vehicle involved in an accident causing death or injury is not charged under the Criminal Code for having caused death while operating a vehicle.

Are there studies showing the prevalence of this situation where the individual is not charged with an offence requiring a minimum sentence, including life imprisonment?

Are there studies to that effect? If yes, why do attorneys decide to proceed with charges of impaired driving and not of causing death or injury while operating a vehicle?

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to studying this bill with the member at committee at which time we will be able to question available witnesses who have conducted studies on the carnage on Canada's roads that we are all too well aware of.

That is precisely why we brought in this legislation. It would certainly increase the penalty for someone who is convicted of impaired driving but, more important, it would provide the police with the tools necessary to ensure that individuals will not have their cases thrown out entirely because of the evidence to the contrary defence.

That is one of the most fundamental changes in what we are doing. It recognizes, as I am sure the hon. member will, that since the introduction of this legislation, technology has moved on. Things have changed. The equipment used to test blood alcohol level has advanced to a stage where it is probably more likely that the equipment is accurate rather than the testimony of the accused and his or her close personal friends saying that he or she only had a couple of beers.

It is for that reason and also for the perverse impact, as the member alluded to in her question, of someone who has a greater incentive, because of an interpretation of the Criminal Code, to refuse a blood alcohol test because of the impact that would have on possible charges the person could face.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, considering that this bill is based on one of the bills originally presented by the member for Mount Royal, we obviously agree with a number of items in it.

I have two questions. One relates to the part of the bill that would authorize the taking of bodily fluids to test for the presence of alcohol or drugs. Every time we mention the topic of taking fluids from a person's body we have a big debate over the violation of the person's rights. I want to ensure that has been dealt with sufficiently, that there is no precedent and that the right of the person has been safeguarded in the bill so that it can be done without being challenged.

My second question relates to the restriction of the use of evidence to the contrary. On the surface, it does not seem fair in our justice system, or maybe it is just labelled wrong, to restrict any evidence if evidence can be brought forward. Of course evidence should not be dismissed from good, scientific, technical equipment. Nevertheless, any evidence should be allowed and it should be up to a jury or a judge to decide on evidence brought forward. It seems unconstitutional to restrict evidence from a case.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is also on the committee that will be studying the bill and I look forward to his input.

First, on the drug impaired driving, drug impaired driving presents a unique challenge because currently we do not have the equipment in place that can provide a roadside test for all drugs in the same way that we have with roadside breathalyzer tests. This bill would authorize police officers to conduct roadside impairment tests for drug impairment.

Currently, someone can still be charged with impaired driving if that impairment is caused by a drug, but this bill would put in place a framework for the police to first conduct a roadside impairment test and, second, an assessment by a drug recognition expert. This would be a specially trained police officer who would be authorized to take bodily fluids and, after finding evidence of impairment, would be able to give evidence of impairment.

With regard to the hon. member's concern about challenges under the charter, I must say that, as we have seen from the Criminal Code provisions in dealing with impaired driving which are some of the most litigated provisions, any of the new provisions that we bring forward as a Parliament will be litigated. We are confident that these are reasonable steps to cut down on what is the new reality on Canadian roads, which is that there is impaired driving and that impaired driving is not only caused by alcohol but also by drugs. There is a much greater chance of someone becoming involved in an accident, which I am sure we will hear in the testimony at committee, if they are under impairment by drugs.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I, too, share my friend's concerns about the current state of the law when it relates to impaired driving.

My question has to do with the frustrations that police across this country experience as they try to apply our drunk driving laws. I am wondering if the member has had an opportunity to discuss these frustrations with his local police or perhaps other police across Canada and whether they are encouraged by the steps our government is taking to keep up with the changes in technology and ensure our streets are safe from those who abuse their rights as drivers.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Mr. Speaker, what we have heard from police is overwhelming. They are increasingly frustrated with many of the cases involving the criminal justice system. Many areas of the criminal justice system need to be addressed and this is certainly one of them.

When we look at the disproportionate number of pages in the Criminal Code that are devoted to impaired driving and all of the defences that have been developed over time dealing with impaired driving and the loopholes that have been created in the system, the police are frustrated. What we have heard from police is that often, whether it is an accident or not, they are first on the scene. They see the carnage that comes from impaired driving, they, more so than the rest of us. When there is an accident at two or three in the morning, when the rest of us may be safely in bed, it is the police who must see the results of that carnage on the highway.

The police want to see a reduction in impaired driving in Canada, as we all do, which is why they support this initiative and why MADD Canada supports this initiative. I think we all have the same goal.

While respecting the charter and respecting privacy, which this bill does, we must also equip our law enforcement and our justice system with the tools they need so that when someone is caught for impaired driving there will be a consequence to that. We do not want people getting off because one of their friends testified that they only had one or two beers when in fact the breathalyzer and the equipment that is now at the police station have proven to be very accurate, very effective and very far advanced to where we were 20 or 30 years ago.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that this is the first time that I stand in this House as the opposition justice critic and I am very pleased to do so.

It gives me great pleasure to speak to Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (impaired driving) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

As I just said in French, this is my first speech as the official opposition's justice critic. I look forward to working with my colleagues, be they in my party or in other parties, to provide intelligent, smart solutions to all justice issues that come before this House.

In considering Bill C-32, we must look at its history in order to understand it. The history of Bill C-32 goes back quite a few years, in fact to May 1999 when the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights released a report entitled “Toward Eliminating Impaired Driving”.

The committee then recognized that drugs were a contributing factor to some fatal motor vehicle accidents. It also emphasized the need to develop better measures to detect drug impaired driving and to obtain the proper evidence allowing for the successful prosecution of individuals who drove while under the influence of drugs.

A further study on this issue was the Senate special committee on illegal drugs report entitled “Cannabis: Our Position for a Canadian Public Policy”. One of its important findings was that there was no reliable, non-intrusive, rapid roadside test for drugs. In the case of cannabis, the best way to test is through blood samples. This then obviously represents a challenge that needs to be met in order to address the problem of drug impaired driving.

In response to the 1999 report, the Department of Justice and its working group on impaired driving consulted extensively with the provinces and territories. The results of these consultations was the October 2003 release of the report entitled “Drug-Impaired Driving: Consultation Document”. This document pointed out that many drug impaired drivers were not voluntarily participating in testing. It does stress the need to develop measures that would allow police to demand that drivers suspected of being impaired by drug use would submit to testing.

The report highlighted two options. The first option was to set a legal limit on the presence of drugs on the body. The second option was to propose legislation that would improve the ability of our law enforcement, our police officers, to demand drug tests. A certified officer could demand a physical sobriety test or take a saliva or sweat sample at the roadside based on the reasonable suspicion of drug impairment. Failure on such a test would then represent reasonable grounds to conduct a more detailed evaluation and, obviously, more intrusive evaluation at a police station. The bill that is before us, Bill C-32, follows in the steps of this second option.

The House of Commons special committee report on the non-medical use of drugs released in the fall of 2003 called for Parliament to develop a strategy addressing the question of drug impaired driving. In April 2004, our then Liberal government, and it is quite coincidental I am sure that the present government bill carries the same number, reintroduced Bill C-32. That bill would have dealt with the drug impaired driving in the fashion described above. Unfortunately, the bill died on the order paper in May 2004 when an election was called.

The Liberals were re-elected, albeit as a minority government, and in November 2004 reintroduced that same bill but as Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (impaired driving) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. That bill made its way to committee and was reported back to the House with some amendments. Unfortunately, that piece of legislation also died on the order paper when the election was called in November 2005.

Thus, the current minority Conservative government's Bill C-32 has followed in the footsteps taken by the previous Liberal government. The Conservatives, however, have chosen to reintroduce it with a few changes, namely, by incorporating stronger penalties than the Liberals' two previous bills had envisioned.

On the same topic, I noted that Canadian Press reported on the introduction of Bill C-2 with the following words. I am quoting from the November 22 wire which reads:

The federal Conservatives have brought in legislation to crack down on drug-impaired drivers--by resurrecting a plan first advanced by the Liberals, adding heavier fines and jail terms, and calling the result a Tory initiative.

I think that this description is accurate, and I can only commend the Tories for recognizing a great idea even when it was developed and first presented by another party, the Liberal Party when it was the government.

Now that we have discussed the background for the bill before us, we must examine the amendments it will make to the Criminal Code. The summary for Bill C-32 reads as follows:

This enactment amends the Criminal Code

(a) to create an offence of operating a motor vehicle while in possession of a controlled substance as defined in subsection 2(1) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act;

(b) to authorize specially trained peace officers to conduct tests to determine whether a person is impaired by a drug or a combination of alcohol and a drug;

(c) to authorize the taking of bodily fluids to test for the presence of alcohol or a drug;

(d) to create an offence of operating a motor vehicle with a concentration of alcohol in the blood that exceeds 80 mg of alcohol in 100 mL of blood and causing bodily harm or death to another person;

(e) to clarify what evidence a person accused of driving with a concentration of alcohol in the blood that exceeds 80 mg of alcohol in 100 mL of blood can introduce to raise a doubt that they were not committing the offence;

(f) to create an offence of refusing to provide a breath sample when the accused knows or ought to know that the accused’s operation of a motor vehicle caused an accident resulting in bodily harm to another person or death; and

(g) to increase the penalties for impaired driving.

The enactment also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

As the Liberal justice critic, I want to say that my party takes very seriously problems of impaired driving caused by alcohol and/or other drugs. In my opinion, the proof of this is that, when we formed the government, we twice introduced a bill amending the Criminal Code to deal with this problem.

I believe the proof is there. We take this issue very seriously and we also take very seriously measures that are smart and effective and that have a good chance and even an excellent chance of achieving the intended objectives. Moreover, we support initiatives to provide services responsible for maintaining public order with concrete and effective tools to implement legislation aimed at cracking down on impaired driving caused by alcohol or other drugs.

We are therefore prepared to support Bill C-32 so that it can make its way to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. The committee could examine the bill in greater detail and summon witnesses and experts to give their own particular perspective. In addition, the committee could propose any amendments it deems necessary. However, I would like to say that we still have reservations about some aspects of this bill. We hope that the government will work constructively with all the opposition parties to address these reservations and that the most useful and most effective legislation will be adopted.

What concerns or reservations do we have about this bill?

Some hon. members have already voiced them.

The Canada Safety Council has already voiced some objections to roadside drug testing. It asks which type of drugs police would test for. Would it simply be illicit, illegal drugs, or would it also be drugs that are legal, in the sense that they are prescription drugs. The person could be in legal possession of those prescription drugs, but the effects of those drugs may cause impairment and it is clearly indicated, for instance, as part of the protocol for taking that drug.

How many of us have not come down with a bad cold or a bad infection, have been prescribed medication by our doctor and when we receive it at the pharmacy it clearly says on the label not to operate machinery or a moving vehicle while taking that medication.

The Canada Safety Council has concerns about what are the drugs that are going to be tested for and whether there will be the possibility of distinguishing between prescription drugs and illegal drugs. As well, how would we deal with the fact that there are certain drugs, like marijuana, which may linger in the body well after the initial high is over and well after the effects of impairment of one's abilities have completely dissipated but traces of the drug still remain?

The Canada Safety Council is asking these questions. How is this bill going to deal with these issues? These are questions that hopefully will be answered if this bill goes to committee.

As I said, as the Liberal critic I will be recommending to my colleagues to vote in favour to send it on to committee so that we can attempt to get answers to these questions and, if it is possible, to amend the bill. If we are given solid answers by experts who say that yes, we could do that and we could amend the legislation in such a way to ensure that it happened, then we would hope that we would get government cooperation in order to do so.

I had another question which was not answered by the parliamentary secretary during questions and comments. I asked whether or not studies had been done to determine in what percentage of cases where there has been death or injury caused by a motor vehicle and there is evidence of impairment--and let us just consider alcohol impairment--the Crown actually brought forth manslaughter charges, which includes the section of the Criminal Code that exists right now that deals with manslaughter and also includes death and injury caused by a vehicle, including impaired driving and provides for a maximum sentence of life.

I would like to know what scientific studies have been done to determine why it is that those provisions have not been used obviously sufficiently from what the parliamentary secretary said. He talked about people who are impaired causing carnage with their vehicles et cetera and that they are getting away with it because they are refusing to take the testing. Where are the problems? We have provisions right now but they appear not to be used. Why is that? What is the evidence that would show why they are not being used?

Finally, we know the government has announced that it will be placing $2 million to the benefit of our law enforcement in order to get the training and to do these roadside sobriety tests. How much money, if any, is the government planning to use to do a public education campaign?

History has shown that Canada-wide public education campaigns about impaired driving have been very well received by the public.

That is why today people have a designated driver when they spend an evening with friends or go to a party in a hall or restaurant where alcohol is served. Today, the vast majority of people resign themselves to drinking nothing. But if they do decide to drink, they have a designated driver.

Does the government plan to put money and people behind the idea of an education campaign on driving while under the influence not only of alcohol, but also drugs, for example? I would like to know. Perhaps the answers will come out during the committee hearings, if the House decides to refer this bill to committee.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, and thank you to my colleagues in this House who are taking part in this debate. As I have already said, I recommend that my colleagues from all parties refer this bill to committee so that we can try to answer these questions and, if necessary, improve the bill.

The House resumed from January 30 consideration of the motion that Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (impaired driving) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-32, which the Bloc Québécois would like to review in committee. In committee, members can realize their full potential and focus on all the details. The Bloc Québécois would like this bill to be referred.

Before getting into Bill C-32, I want to take a few minutes to say that the government, where justice is concerned, has a rather controversial record. We know that this government has been very active, having introduced nearly a dozen bills. I would add that none of the bills really appeal to us.

There was Bill C-9 to amend section 742 on conditional sentencing. The government wanted to remove judicial discretion from the judiciary. One of the characteristics of the government is not to believe that our judiciary is serious and competent. It always wants to control and restrict the capacity of judges and increase their limitations when they pronounce sentences or make rulings.

The purpose of Bill C-9, which amended section 742, was to remove conditional sentences as an option for the trial judge for all offences punishable by 10 years in prison, even if it was brought down to one or two years in prison.

Unfortunately, we had to fundamentally change this bill in committee. I think we did our work as parliamentarians. Bill C-32 before us is a little more interesting because its purpose is to harmonize section 253 with everything to do with impaired driving. This a significant social problem and there is jurisprudence. I will have a chance to say more on this. They want to harmonize the legislation and use standardized sobriety tests. Our challenge, in committee, will be to look into the sensitivity, performance and operational nature of these tests.

There was also the bill on judges' salaries. This is an important debate because we have all studied Montesquieu and I know we are all motivated by the philosophy of strict separation of the legislative, the judiciary and the executive.

It is important for the three branches to live together with a healthy regard for each other's jurisdictions. That is why, when the question of judges’ salaries arises, Parliament wants to have an independent commission. It is hard for Parliament to decide how much judges’ salaries should be because judges are a major branch of the government involved not only in the administration of justice but ultimately in the interpretation of our laws. As parliamentarians, we make the laws. The government is empowered to implement them, and we hope that judges can interpret them.

For a long time, there was a balance. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was supposed to earn the same salary as the Prime Minister, and everything flowed from that. Then the government decided to upset the balance and proposed remuneration levels that were different from what the independent commission suggested. That was another bill we were unfortunately unable to support.

As I was saying, we want Bill C-32 referred to a committee because impaired driving is an extremely serious matter. People who take the wheel and drive on public roads must not pose a danger to their fellow citizens; that is obvious.

Thus, the government has passed legislation on suspended sentences and on the remuneration of judges.

The government has also introduced a bill on dangerous offenders. The government even hopes to establish a legislative committee. Everyone in the House understands the difference between a legislative committee and a standing committee. A legislative committee exists for the life of a certain bill, for example, the air quality bill leading to Canada’s Clean Air Act, which has been introduced by the government. My hon. colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie is one of the Bloc Québécois’ leading lights when it comes to the environment and the Conservative government should also recognize him as a leading light in view of his great expertise and the soundness of his views.

It is the Speaker of the House who appoints the committee chairs for as long as the work of each legislative committee continues. It is not the chair’s peers, the hon. members assigned to the committee, who elect the chair.

The bill on dangerous offenders is a very bad bill. It is animated by a reflexive reaction that would lead to the “three strikes” kind of approach we see in the United States. This is not a bill that the Bloc Québécois intends to support.

The government has introduced a bill on the age of consent, which is called the age of protection, with a clause that creates an exception when the age difference is less than five years. I believe that the leader of the Bloc Québécois said he was in favour of this bill when he was asked. Clearly, we will have to make amendments to reflect the new reality. It is true that sexuality is probably not what it was in your early childhood or early adolescence, Mr. Speaker. Today, adolescents start having sex earlier, when they are younger. In my day, we waited longer. All that has changed, and we have to take stock of those changes.

The government has also introduced a bill containing amendments relating to summary prosecutions. This is a rather technical bill, and I have to say that we are more or less in favour of it.

The government has also introduced Bill C-10 concerning minimum penalties for offences involving firearms.

Hon. members will remember Allan Rock. I am not sure whether his name evokes good or bad memories for the members of this House. When Allan Rock was minister of justice, he introduced a bill. I think that for my colleague, the former leader of the official opposition, this is an excellent memory. I know he was close to Allan Rock, whom the member for LaSalle—Émard, the former Prime Minister, appointed as Canada's ambassador to the United Nations. I have a great deal of respect for Allan Rock. I think he is a brilliant man who served this House well, except when it came to young offenders. The former government went completely off track on that issue.

All of this is to say that the current government has introduced Bill C-10, which seeks to increase the mandatory minimum penalties for offences involving firearms. Unfortunately, we do not have any conclusive studies on the deterrent effect of mandatory minimum penalties.

This morning in committee, we were doing a clause by clause study of Bill C-10. There is a great deal of wisdom gathered when all of the opposition parties are united in asking the government to do certain things. All of the opposition parties—the Liberals, the Bloc and the neo-Bolsheviks—asked the government to undertake a longitudinal study of the impact of mandatory minimum sentencing to find out whether it works as a deterrent or not.

Simply increasing mandatory minimum sentences is not enough. We have to know whether that will really bring peace to our communities. The Bloc Québécois, with its characteristic complete openness and scientific rigour, will see if the government does agree to the request for a longitudinal study of the impact of mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes because we have had mandatory minimum sentences for 10 years now.

Before I get back to Bill C-32, I cannot help but emphasize the government's remarkable inconsistency. On the one hand, the government is demanding that we increase mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes, but on the other, it wants to abolish the gun registry. Police officers in Canada and Quebec consult this registry hundreds, if not thousands, of times a day. Before entering a dwelling, officers need to know if there are firearms inside. I cannot for the life of me understand why the government wants to abolish this registry and deprive police officers of a tool they need.

I felt it was my duty to review the government's record. The government also introduced a bill about the national DNA database maintained by the RCMP. The committee will have an opportunity to study this bill.

Historically, the Bloc Québécois has always been concerned about street gangs and organized crime. It is always a pleasure to work with my colleague, the member for Ahuntsic. She and I have agreed on a number of measures and proposals that I will be presenting to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to ensure that we have the most effective means of combating street gangs and organized crime.

The Bloc Québécois is more committed to an approach that would enable our police to carry out successful investigations than to increasing mandatory minimum penalties.

Having completed this overview, I feel it my duty to begin discussion of Bill C-32. This bill would enable police officers to require that a person suspected of impaired driving due to alcohol or drugs submit to a sobriety test.

At present, the Criminal Code already contains provisions concerning impaired driving involving alcohol. Now, there would be more specific provisions concerning drugs. A person suspected of impaired driving could be compelled to submit to a test. However, jurisprudence is not clear on that subject. The interpretation that the Minister of Justice makes in this bill is to say that the Criminal Code at present does not give police officers the power to require that a person submit to a sobriety test nor to take a sample of bodily fluids as part of an investigation into infractions related to impaired driving.

If Bill C-32 is adopted, police officers will be able to require that a person suspected of impaired driving involving drugs must undergo tests and consent to the taking of bodily fluids for testing.

There is a need for some fine tuning. The work of the committee will be to ensure that the available detection technology—and I believe this is based on experience in the United States—is not unduly intrusive. We have a Charter and judicial guarantees. We want the police to have the proper tools, but it is a matter of balance.

It is important to talk about the difference between drugs and alcohol. As a member, I drink very little alcohol. I can claim no credit for that; I have never liked alcohol, and I do not use drugs. In short, I could be considered rather straight and my lifestyle reflects that. My greatest pleasures are not derived from alcohol or drugs. However, some of our fellow citizens do use drugs and alcohol.

We do not want people with a licence driving out on public roads to pose a threat to their fellow citizens. We believe that the police are empowered under the common law and the Criminal Code to stop people they see in situations of potential risk.

In 1985, if I am not mistaken—I do not want to mislead the House—in the matter of Dedman v. The Queen, the Supreme Court examined the legality of the R.I.D.E. program in Ontario. Under the program, road blocks are set up. This is done in Quebec too. Checks are done in busy areas. The police, peace officers on duty, stop people to find out whether they have been drinking. Obviously, when this practice began at the end of the 1980s, there were questions about the legality of the operation.

Usually, under the common law and the Criminal Code, a person stopping someone in a car must have reasonable grounds for believing that the individual is impaired or contravening the law. Operation R.I.D.E., as run in Ontario and as it is now run in Quebec, was simply a preventive measure. The aim was to see that all who were stopped were sober, even if there were not reasonable grounds. But, I repeat, under the common law and the Criminal Code, the exercise of the power to stop and arrest people must be based on reasonable grounds.

The Supreme Court said that people could be stopped to see if they were sober, but that would be as far as it went. When a person is stopped at a roadblock to check if they have been drinking, their car cannot be searched for heroin. The Supreme Court authorized the practices saying that a public goal of sufficient importance was involved to warrant police intervention.

The bill today wishes to go a bit further. The aim is to be able to determine impairment not only from alcohol but also from drugs. A major distinction, however, must be made. The presence of alcohol in the blood is much more easily detected than the presence of drugs. From what we have been told, if a person has consumed marijuana, traces of such consumption can be detected in the blood of this individual for up to seven, eight, nine or ten days afterwards, but that does not mean that the person was intoxicated at the time of their arrest.

That is why the committee must be very careful to recognize that what is actually important to the public is to make sure that the people who are driving vehicles on public roads are completely sober, that they are not intoxicated by either alcohol or drugs.

Breathalyzers work according to a different premise. Breathalyzers can determine whether the alcohol level in the blood is over 0.08% or 0.8 grams per litre. These facts are verified and charges can be laid. Where drug detection technologies are concerned, however, we have to make sure that they are sophisticated enough so that peace officers do not end up laying charges against people who are not really intoxicated.

Since I still have a minute, I will close by adding that one of the merits of this bill is that it will harmonize things. Since section 253 provides for different penalties, depending on whether charges are laid under paragraph (a), in which an individual is impaired by alcohol or a drug, or under paragraph (b), in which it is proved that an individual has consumed a specific quantity of alcohol or drugs.

The penalties are not the same, which does not make a lot of sense. It is the consequence of the deeds committed, and not just the evidence provided under paragraph (a) or (b), that should determine the sentences.

In conclusion, the Bloc Québécois hopes that Bill C-32 will be the subject of serious study in committee. I am sure that we can count on all parliamentarians to be thorough and rigorous in their work.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (impaired driving) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

Sadly, it is quite fitting for me to be discussing impaired driving today. Only a few days ago New Brunswick provincial court judge Sylvio Savoie gave a maximum five year sentence to a dangerous drunk driver who has been a threat in our community for some time. Judge Savoie sentenced this dangerous individual to a maximum punishment, despite the fact that the crown prosecutor asked for a four year sentence, which clearly shows, on this side of the House, that our view to leave discretion with judges often works to the benefit of the community.

Judge Savoie put it in his own words best when he said that it was his duty to see that those people on the highway are protected. That is what we on this side believe about our criminal justice system.

This particular individual could serve as the perfect example for us today in discussing Bill C-32 and criminal legislation in general, in justifying tougher sentences and harsher punishments to put a definite end to impaired driving of any sort.

In fact, this repeat offender served 21 days in 1990 for refusing the breathalyzer, 14 days in 1995 for refusal, 30 days in 1999 for a refusal and 18 months in 2002 for driving over the legal blood alcohol limit. If that was not bad enough, he was given 22 months for impaired driving and driving while prohibited. He returned to court a week later to deal with another outstanding impaired charge and was sentenced to three years.

Last week this five year sentence was added to that list of sentences and to the great benefit of the law-abiding citizens to whom this person represented a severe threat.

It is important to note that this sentence was handed out under existing Criminal Code provisions, the bulk of which have been enacted under Liberal governments. Let us face it, impaired driving is not acceptable. It is a dangerous criminal behaviour that sadly kills too many Canadian citizens every year, lives that could be easily spared.

Quite frankly, I hope one day that impaired driving will be a thing of the past and we simply will not have to deal with bills such as Bill C-32 because all Canadians will know it is not acceptable to drink and drive.

For now, though, we still have a lot of work to do in our society and as legislators in this Parliament to get there. Bill C-32 is a start. It proposes to help curb the problem of impaired driving.

This is not the first time, however, that the House has dealt with impaired driving legislation. In recent years the House of Commons has been in fact quite active. In 1999 a House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights released a report entitled “Toward Eliminating Impaired Driving” which recognized the need to develop better ways to detect impaired driving, especially impaired driving related to drugs.

A Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs also published a report called “Cannabis: Our Position for a Canadian Public Policy”. Once again, the committee noted that there is no reliable, non-intrusive roadside test for drugs.

In 2003, the Department of Justice also released a report entitled “Drug-Impaired Driving: Consultation Document”. Again, conclusions mentioned how drivers do not routinely submit to drug tests and how few measures the police had at their disposal to test drivers for alleged influence of drugs.

This is why in 2004 the previous Liberal government introduced a bill to establish a new national strategy to deal with impaired driving. Unfortunately, this legislation died on the order paper when an election was called. As soon as Parliament was back at work after the 2004 election, the re-elected Liberal government reintroduced legislation to deal with impaired driving and that was known as Bill C-16. It is very unfortunate that this piece of legislation also died on the order paper when the 2006 election was called.

Here we are today with the current Bill C-32 legislation, highly inspired I suggest by the very progressive Liberal justice agenda of previous governments.

Let us look at the bill in its pith and substance. Bill C-32 does a number of things. It provides tools to detect drug-impaired drivers and creates the offence of driving while in possession of illicit drugs. This would be routinely known by those of us who have dabbled in law and know that with respect to alcohol-related offences, it is also, under many provincial statutes, illegal to have possession of alcohol in the vehicle, which is a precursor to preventing the improper imbibing of alcohol while driving or being under the influence of alcohol while driving. This is a mere extension of that with respect to drugs.

It would restrict the evidence to the contrary rule, which I will delve into subsequently. It will also create the offence of being over .08, causing death or bodily harm, which goes of course to the alcohol side of impairment. It would increase penalties for impaired drivers and for driving while disqualified under provincial statutes or otherwise. It would, finally, assist the police in investigating alcohol-related crashes.

Bill C-32 provides for several means of determining whether a driver is impaired by drugs including standard sobriety tests, training experts to recognize drivers impaired by drugs, taking samples of bodily fluids, and creating an offence for refusing to comply.

In addition, Bill C-32 will establish a new hybrid offence punishable by a maximum of five years imprisonment and prohibition on driving.

The bill will also limit the use of “evidence to the contrary”, better known as the “two-beer” defence, while retaining valid defences.

The elimination of the two beer defence is an interesting point brought forward by this law. Forty years ago, breathalyzers and other machines used to calculate blood alcohol levels were prone to errors depending on operator experience, various circumstances and external factors. Frankly, technology has come a long way.

Therefore, it was possible in the past that individuals were wrongfully accused and sometimes wrongfully convicted after roadside tests and station-administered tests. They were wrongfully accused and convicted of offences relative to the .08 limitation.

However, today increasingly accurate technological advances have ensured that such malfunctions with detection devices are almost impossible. Each machine prints out internal checks before each test. Operators are better educated. In short, we have the science now.

There are very few cases where the calibration of the machine is in error or where the operator did not have specific knowledge of how to administer the impairment test. Consequently, there are very few cases, I am very confident in saying, where the accused are wrongfully accused or convicted of driving over the legal limit of .08 on the alcohol side.

We have made progress. Just as there are very few, if none I might say, wrongful accusations for convictions, I would also say on the other hand that there are more convictions, making our roads safer places. It is safe to say that in the mores of society, drug impaired driving has not caught up to and maintained the same level of vigilance in detection that alcohol impaired driving has.

Let me for a moment compare the technical aspects of evidence gathering with respect to crime. By doing so I hope to illustrate that we are a long way from being precise on drug impaired driving. We have made great achievements with respect to alcohol impaired driving, and on all other aspects of criminal justice we have made great progress because of science.

Let me compare our state of affairs with respect to impaired driving with the introduction of DNA evidence in the criminal justice system as a whole. With all the technology police and law enforcement officials have at their disposition today, would we ever consider debating a DNA match in court by presenting a few friends who could testify in favour of an accused who was faced with a positive DNA match? I doubt very much that any judge in this country would find the testimony of a few friends of the accused as a valid basis for rejecting accurate, scientifically precise DNA matches.

Oddly enough, on the impaired driving side, if a few drinking buddies are willing to testify that the accused only had a beer or two, a court can today reject the results of highly reliable, technologically advanced, precise instruments that otherwise perhaps would have not been available in the past.

This is how this amendment, building on Liberal traditions, is keeping up with technological advances. It is important to support our police officers, those on the front line who administer such tests, and give them the faith that we should have in the laws as they administer the tests and bring about proper convictions.

In December 2005 the Supreme Court of Canada considered the evidence to the contrary, the two beer defence, and found that the results of a breath test can be disregarded, could be disregarded, without any evidence of machine malfunction if the accused meets the test of raising a doubt, raising evidence to the contrary.

Bill C-32 establishes new offences, namely impaired driving causing bodily harm, punishable by imprisonment for a term of not more than ten years, or causing death, punishable by life imprisonment. A new offence for refusing to provide a breath sample, in cases of bodily injury or death, will carry the same sentences.

In addition, penalties for impaired driving will be higher. For a first offence, the fine increases from $600 to $1,000; for a second offence, sentencing increases from 14 days to 30 days; for a third offence, sentencing increases from 90 days to 120 days and a maximum of 18 months on summary conviction. Naturally, individuals found guilty of impaired driving will also lose their licence.

Bill C-32 also provides tools to assist the police by enabling them to test drivers within three hours of a collision. It also allows them to reduce the current time between breath tests to three minutes and also to extend the driver's seat presumption for refusal cases.

Let us be clear. As parliamentarians representing all regions of this country, as legislators, we have a special task, but we are all also somebody's son, husband or wife, somebody's father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, and we see, as law-abiding citizens, aside from our role as parliamentarians, the carnage of impaired driving in our society. We react not just as parliamentarians, but as parents, as children, as friends of people who have been hurt by the ravages of impaired driving, whether alcohol or drug. In short, drunk drivers are dangerous not only to themselves but to the whole of society.

That is why Bill C-32, while a good attempt, must be a good law. It must be efficacious. In its current form, it does not address many of the points raised in the multitude of committee and justice department reports that I referred to in the first part of my address.

It is crucial that this law be built on a solid foundation and take the findings of the reports, the commissioned studies and the justice department opinions and effect a very solid law, as we have seen with technological advances on the alcohol side, a law, as administered, that results in convictions, will provide deterrents and also does not lead to wrongful accusations or convictions. But primarily, the law must work.

Bill C-32 raises a number of questions which I as a member of the justice committee will be most eager to delve into so that we can perfect it and hopefully bring it back to the House as a efficacious law. These questions, and they must be raised, are as follows. They relate to how to test drivers on roadsides for drug impaired driving.

The amendments with respect to the alcohol side are terrific amendments and will act as further deterrents and better help on detection with respect to alcohol impaired driving. With respect to drug impaired driving, there are currently no reliable tests. I would quote the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada when he said in the House last week that “we do not have the equipment in place that can provide a roadside test for all drugs in the same way that we have with roadside breathalyzer tests” for alcohol detection.

And never a truer word was spoken by a member of the Conservative Party, a Conservative parliamentarian and member of the cabinet by virtue of being a parliamentary secretary. I want to give compliments where are compliments are due. I am certainly open to complimenting my friends on the Conservative side when they speak the truth and are 100% accurate, but 100% accuracy is really the standard which we are trying to achieve, with respect, as parliamentarians in Bill C-32, and the law as drafted cannot be said to achieve that on the drug impaired aspect.

There is another question related to the proposed legislation. I will be happy to study this and help this through committee. What drugs would the police be testing for? All drugs? Certain drugs? This certainly raises many questions. It has been scientifically demonstrated that cannabis can leave traces in the body for weeks after the physical and mental impairment effects have dissipated. How would the new drug recognition experts panel react to this?

How are we going to deal with the multitude of drugs, perhaps not even listed in the Criminal Code, if they cause impairment? What about prescription drugs? Although acquired legally through a doctor's prescription, many medications have warnings on them. Many people are irresponsible in taking one or several medications without reading the warnings. They put themselves in a position to harm others. They put themselves in a position to be impaired and not capable of driving safely. How does this bill deal with that aspect? How would the new drug recognition experts deal with this?

We live in a country where winter, certainly just lately but before that perhaps not, is very harsh and is synonymous with cold and flu season. That can last up to five or six months. What about the millions of Canadians who take flu and cold medications? For many of those medications, we are told not to drive or operate heavy machinery while taking them. This is a problem that Bill C-32 does not specifically address. I do not think we can leave it to the regulations to detect. This certainly must be canvassed through the best of expert testimony at the committee level.

The standardized field sobriety tests and the pooling together of the experts is an excellent idea, but we have to ask where they would be. Would they be available to every region of Canada? It is a high level of expertise. Will it apply in rural parts of Canada, like the riding of Tobique—Mactaquac, for instance? Certainly in the grand city of Moncton we would get those experts.

Furthermore, the only reliable test for drug impaired driving is a blood sample or a urine or saliva test and many of these might not stand a charter challenge, unfortunately.

In short and in conclusion, Liberals support this bill. We support it going to committee. We support the work of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. We support local operations such as Opération Nez rouge. We want our streets and roadways to be safe. In doing so, we support the bill. We have many questions and we hope those questions will be answered at committee. We hope the House will support the questions and give the committee enough resources and time to proffer the proper evidence and come back with a bill that will protect Canadians.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment this member in particular for supporting one more piece of legislation that this government has put forward in less than year. If he is here today supporting this bill not because it is great legislation, which it is, why in the 13 years prior to this did the member and his party do nothing as far as tough on crime legislation goes? In fact, in very short order, we have taken the initiative to do that, to protect Canadians.

Of course in northern Alberta I was involved in any many trials of impaired operation, and I always found in regard to evidence to the contrary, evidence which a particular clause in the bill will in fact rule out in some semblance, that it was shameful, quite frankly, because often people who could afford good lawyers and could afford to go to court and provide evidence to the contrary had a different form of justice than the people who could not. I am hoping that the agenda of the justice committee, which the member sits on with members of the government, will work toward more equalization in the law so that the law and justice are available to all.

I am wondering in particular, though, whether the member has thoughts on how the crown prosecutors across Canada feel about this piece of legislation. How does he feel about the training that RCMP officers are going to need in order to combat and deal with drug offences? Of course, as he is fully aware, it currently is the law that drug impaired driving is not allowed, just as drunk driving is not. It is on the basis of subjective evidence and this bill deals with that in some form.

I am wondering if the member could comment on that as well as the issue of deterrence. Many clients in my office have had 6, 8 or even 10 prior offences on impaired operation, which 20 or 30 years ago of course was not taken as seriously as it is today, not nearly as seriously as this government does.

I am wondering if the member could comment on those two things as well as the positive steps that we are taking to make sure that we, as a Conservative government, deter people from drinking and driving all over Canada, because of course it affects hundreds of thousands of people per year.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, a lot of work has been done on this aspect. I mentioned in my speech the 1990, 2003, and 2004 reports of various committees with respect to getting tough on crime. The Conservatives cannot take full credit for this bill; this is an evolutionary process.

I will skip quite quickly to the issue of drug impairment detection. It is important to underline to Canadian citizens and members of the House that at the same time the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice introduced the bill--or I should say, they spoke about it, as it is the norm for the Conservatives to announce a bill and then put it to the committee--they also cut funding for a project and study on the development of tests for the detection of drug impairment. One officer outside my riding called me and suggested that it was a shame that this project and study process had been curtailed.

There has been a promise of further funding for further studies with respect to how the police, the front line officials, can perfect the drug impairment detection test. As yet the details are scarce, which is precisely why this bill needs to go to committee. We need to hear from law enforcement officials and the attorneys general across the country. The member is quite right in suggesting that we need to hear from crown prosecutors, as they often have to deal with a file that is not perfect and take it to court to prove those convictions.

We will work on this in committee in a very non-partisan way. As I said in my introduction, this is merely an indication that the current Conservative government felt the Liberal justice agenda was a good one. The Conservatives took what we had, put their stamp on it, and we will be happy to work on perfecting it.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have appreciated hearing my colleague's remarks and the interventions from other members. There has been a great deal of discussion and I do have some questions.

Could the member comment on some of the concerns around the costs involved in training officers to do this work? It is very important that our police forces have the proper training to make sure that they are indeed able to move forward and protect the public as the member so wishes.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it is very typical in the Conservative justice agenda to make grand pronouncements on law and not back them up with the resources needed to effect the law as proclaimed.

Bill C-9 and Bill C-10 deal with mandatory minimums and conditional sentences. Some $225 million was budgeted for prisons. Most attorneys general met in Newfoundland last year and collectively said it should probably be something like $2 billion. With respect to this law, there is no indication that there will be adequate resources to develop the tests for drug impairment detection. We will have a law with no teeth in it.

I can look at the testimony of Chief Blair of Toronto who, using existing law passed by previous Parliaments and extensive resources, had a major and effective crackdown in crime in the GTA. There has been no indication from the Canadian Chiefs of Police that adequate resources will be put in place for the new panoply of Conservative laws which are intended to be tough on crime. Without adequate resources to put its wishes into effect, I am afraid the Conservative government is leading the Canadian public into a false sense of security by promoting law on the 6 p.m. news but not backing it up with the necessary resources. It is cutting funding to everything that is dear to Canadians, including effective, smart, judicial discretion and effective and smart law enforcement. That is what is missing from the agenda.

We are willing to work with the Conservative government as the bills go through the House. I do not know what we do with a minority government that governs like a majority and will not fund the necessary tools to put good laws into effect once they come out of committee.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, we are getting the job done and we are moving forward to action.

I am pleased to speak to Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (impaired driving) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. This bill would bring Canada's impaired driving laws into the 21st century and would greatly assist the police in their efforts to investigate impaired driving incidents and the Crown in its prosecution of alleged offenders.

I know that all members recognize that impaired driving remains the single criminal offence that is most likely to result in death or injury of Canadians. If passed, this legislation would make an immeasurable contribution to the safety of all Canadians. Therefore, I trust that all parties will support the legislation and that we can cooperate so that these needed changes can be considered by the standing committee. I can assure all members that the government is open to consideration of all improvements that the committee can suggest, after hearing from stakeholders, to make the bill even more effective in achieving its goals.

The bill has three main components. First, it would give the police the tools they need to investigate drug impaired driving. Second, it would make changes to reflect the great advances that have been made in breathalyzer technology since Parliament first introduced breath testing almost 40 years ago. Third, it would introduce new offences and increase penalties for existing offences.

Many members in this House are familiar with the drug impaired provisions of this bill. They are virtually identical to the provisions of Bill C-16, which was introduced in the last Parliament, reviewed and amended in committee and reported unanimously with amendments by the committee. However, it died on the order paper.

There is no question that police and prosecutors are eagerly awaiting the passage of those changes.

I will confine my remarks to the new provisions of Bill C-32 so that members will understand what motivated the government to bring these amendments forward.

Probably the most important change in the bill is the proposal to ensure that only scientifically valid defences can be used where a person is accused of driving with a concentration of alcohol exceeding 80 milligrams in 100 millilitres of blood, driving 80 over, or .08, as the offence is commonly known.

Parliament first enacted an alcohol driving offence in 1921. Our current Criminal Code section 253(a) offence of driving impaired was enacted in 1951. It has been known for more than 50 years that a person with more than 80 milligrams of alcohol in his or her system is a danger to himself or herself and others on the road. A person with a blood alcohol content, BAC, of 90 milligrams is estimated by the U.S. Department of Transportation to be at least 11 times as likely to be involved in a fatal accident as a sober driver. Above that level, the risk increases exponentially. At a BAC of 125, the person is at least 29 times as likely to be involved in a fatal accident.

While recognizing the risk of collision with escalating blood alcohol concentrations, the problem has always been how to prove the concentration. Determining the BAC can be done by analyzing blood. However, obtaining a blood sample is intrusive and it can take a long time to complete the blood analysis, during which time the accused does not know whether the charge will be laid.

The problems with blood analysis were overcome in the 1950s with the invention of the Borkenstein breathalyzer, which converted alcohol in breath to alcohol in blood in a reliable, scientifically valid process.

Parliament recognized the risk of a blood alcohol concentration that exceeds 80 when in 1969 it passed legislation making it an offence for a person to drive with that much alcohol in his or her system. It is a peculiarity of the law that it can only be proven by making a person provide the evidence that can be used against him or her in court. Accordingly, Parliament made it an offence to refuse to provide a breath sample on an approved instrument.

Advances in technology made it possible to measure BAC at roadside, so Parliament provided for the use of a roadside screening device in 1979. These screeners indicate that a person has failed, but do not give a precise BAC for use in court. They do provide the police with grounds to demand the approved instrument test and the results from the approved instrument are admissible in court. Again, it is an offence not to provide a breath sample on an approved screening device and it is an offence not to provide a breath sample on the approved instrument.

The courts have recognized the unique nature of this law. They have upheld its constitutionality as a reasonable limit on the charter right against unreasonable search and seizure that is justified by the horrendous toll caused by drunk drivers.

In 1979 Parliament had established a two step process for determining whether a driver was over 80 that appears simple: a reasonable suspicion of alcohol in the driver leads to a roadside approved device screening test which, if failed, leads to an approved instrument test which, if over 80, is proven by filing the certificate of the qualified technician in court.

However, impaired driving, and in particular, the over 80 cases, have become among the most complex cases to prove under the Criminal Code. It almost seems that every word and every comma in every section has been litigated.

Anyone who doubts how complicated the law has become only needs to pick up Martin's Annual Criminal Code. The 2007 edition has 12 pages of legislative text and annotations for the 13 sections dealing with murder, manslaughter and infanticide. Martin's has 62 pages of legislative text and annotations for the nine sections dealing with impaired driving.

Section 253(b) over 80 cases take up a grossly disproportionate amount of provincial court time. Often this is the sole charge as there is no evidence of erratic driving and few signs of impairment. If the defence can raise a reasonable doubt as to the blood alcohol content at the time of testing being equal to the BAC at the time of driving, the prosecution will virtually never have other evidence to prove the person was over 80 at the time of driving.

When Parliament first adopted breath testing legislation in 1969, the operator had to perform a series of tests to ensure the approved instrument was calibrated properly and had to read a needle to obtain a reading which was recorded manually. Clearly, there were opportunities for operator error and even an erroneous transcription of the BAC. Therefore, Parliament provided that the BAC reading is, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, deemed to be the BAC at time of driving.

Unfortunately, even for a new generation of approved instruments that give digital readings, have automated internal checks and give a printout of the internal process, the courts have interpreted “evidence to the contrary” to include evidence given by the accused that he only had a small quantity of alcohol to drink, typically the two beer defence. The defence then calls a toxicologist to estimate the defendant's BAC based on the accused's testimony regarding the consumption of alcohol, time elapsed, food consumption, et cetera.

Essentially the accused is saying that regardless of the BAC at the time of testing, his or her BAC while driving could not have been over 80, given the small amount of alcohol consumed. The accused does not have to account for the BAC reading on the approved instrument at the police station. The courts, unless they reject totally the accused's evidence, hold that the presumption that the BAC at testing equals the BAC at the time of driving is defeated. Without this presumption, the prosecution does not have evidence to prove the over 80 offence. The defendant is acquitted for a lack of evidence showing the legal BAC at the time of driving.

The Supreme Court considered evidence to the contrary in Regina v. Boucher in December 2005, where the accused who had blown .092 testified that he only had drunk two large beers. Although the conviction was restored five to four, the decision turned solely on the credibility of the accused and whether the judge had properly considered the evidence as a whole.

The majority found at paragraph 43, “The judge also erred when she stated that the credibility of the accused and his witnesses could be assessed in light of the results of the breathalyzer test before applying the presumption”.

Consequently, the Supreme Court has effectively found that the results of a breath test can be disregarded by a trial judge and an accused found not guilty without any evidence whatsoever that the machine has malfunctioned, at least for the presumption of accuracy for the qualified technician's certificate.

Even if the court is suspicious of the accused's evidence, the presumption is lost because the accused only needs to meet the test of raising any evidence to the contrary. Frankly, I believe the courts have misunderstood what evidence to the contrary is meant to be.

Parliament passed the breathalyzer law in 1969 so that the calculation of the BAC could be done by the approved instrument, which takes the guesswork out of the equation provided the approved instrument is functioning properly, the operator uses it properly and the results are properly recorded.

The court's interpretation may have been justified when the technology was such that operator error could affect it and there would be no direct evidence of this. Therefore, it is very much a defence that reflects the weakness of the technology in use 40 years ago. I do not believe it is Parliament's intention that evidence to the contrary should be simply speculation about what an accused BAC might have been.

Given today's state of technology, evidence to the contrary must be direct evidence that the machine either did not operate properly or was not properly operated. If there is no such evidence, then the BAC produced by the machine must be accepted. The accused may still be acquitted if he or she can show that he or she was under 80 at the time of driving without contradicting the BAC results on the approved instrument at the police station. This could happen, for example, if the person downed several beers and was arrested before the alcohol was absorbed. It could occur that after driving but before being tested the person consumed alcohol and then it was absorbed by the time the approved instrument test was taken.

The fundamental question for Parliament is whether it can trust BAC readings produced by the approved instruments. Fortunately, advances in technology ensure that the accused receives full disclosure of modern approved instrument tests through the printout of the internal operations of the equipment.

In March of last year, the department commissioned a report from Brian Hodgson, a forensic toxicologist and chair of the alcohol test committee of the Canadian Society of Forensic Science on the validity of breath testing. I would be happy to provide a copy of this report to any member who wishes it. I trust that Mr. Hodgson will be called as a witness on the standing committee if we send the bill for review after second reading.

I would like to summarize his paper in this way. He wrote, “The Breathalyzer is entirely manually operated and therefore the reliability is vulnerable to human error. The test results are handwritten by the operator and vulnerable to transcription error. The advanced instruments have pre-programmed functions that minimize human error. For example, when electrical power is first turned on, all instruments must reach a specified operating temperature and the operator can then proceed with the testing of the subject. With the Breathalyzer, this function is the responsibility of the operator. The advanced instruments will not operate until the specified temperature is reached and have pre-programmed safety checks that will signal problems by means of air messages and will abort the testing procedures.

These approved instruments are highly sophisticated and must pass a rigorous evaluation process before the alcohol test committee recommends that they be listed as approved instruments under the Criminal Code for use in the courts. These instruments cannot be bought off the shelf at Wal-Mart. Perhaps the standing committee can arrange to have a demonstration of the older instruments and the new instruments so they can appreciate the differences.

In light of this science and the developments with the approved instruments, it is unfortunate that our courts have failed to reflect, in their jurisprudence, the evolution of the technology. Ignoring the BAC produced by one of the modern approved instruments and substituting for its accurate, scientific analysis of breath alcohol a calculation based on the testimony of the accused is deeply discouraging to the police and the prosecutors who have done everything that Parliament has prescribed.

As far back as 1968, the alcohol test committee expressed concern over the courts accepting testimony that effectively contradicted the approved instrument. In 1999, evidence to the contrary was discussed during the special hearings on the standing committee regarding impaired driving. The committee wrote:

The Committee understands the frustration expressed by justice system personnel over time-consuming defenses that, at least on the surface, may appear frivolous. However, given that the accused would have no effective means of checking the accuracy of a breath analysis machine, the Committee agrees that limiting the interpretation of “evidence to the contrary” in such a manner as recommended could effectively amount to the creation of an absolute liability criminal offence. Such a result would run the risk of interfering with an accused person's rights guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In present circumstances, therefore, the Committee does not support amendments to the Criminal Code that would limit the interpretation of “evidence to the contrary”.

Circumstances have changed. We now have modern technology that not only is designed to eliminate operator error but also prints out the results of the internal diagnostic checks that ensure that it is operating accurately. The accused receives a copy of that printout and can make a full answer and defence.

It is just as unacceptable to ignore the approved instrument BAC reading in favour of the testimony of the defendant and his or her friends as it would be for a court to ignore DNA found on the victim which analysis showed came from the accused because he or she and some friends testified that the accused was not at the scene of the crime, with no explanation of how the DNA happened to get there.

As MADD Canada's CEO, Andrew Murie, said in a press release calling for a rapid passage of the bill. He said:

Canada appears to be the only country that throws out the results of the evidentiary breath and blood samples based on the unsubstantiated, self-serving testimony of an accused impaired driver. We are very pleased to see the government limit these challenges.

I believe members will agree that a person who has been drinking is unlikely to have an exact recollection of the amount of alcohol that he or she consumed and it is appropriate that the blood alcohol content of the driver be established by a scientifically validated instrument that gives an exact reading rather than by a calculation based on a shaky foundation.

The amendments that we are proposing abolish the loose, undefined concept of “evidence to the contrary” and lists the actual scientifically valid defences that an accused can bring forward.

We are also reflecting in Bill C-32 the advances in technology by reducing from 15 minutes to 3 minutes the time required between the two required breath tests. The old breathalyzers required at least 10 minutes between tests for the operator to set the instrument back up so it was ready for another test. The new instruments are ready in a matter of minutes and they signal to the operator that they are ready to proceed.

Although there are other technical changes in the bill, I wish to conclude my remarks by discussing the changes in the offences and the new punishments.

The Criminal Code currently provides for higher maximum penalties for impaired driving causing death and impaired driving causing bodily harm. These higher penalties do not apply to refusal and over-80 offences, so unless there is also a conviction for causing bodily harm or death arising from the accident, a lower maximum penalty applies.

While evidence of BAC is not a prerequisite in order to prove the charge of impaired driving causing death or bodily harm, it is admissible in court. There is, therefore, an incentive for the accused to refuse to provide a sample in a case involving injury or death because the maximum penalty for refusal is five years.

Even if it is admitted, the BAC reading is not necessarily sufficient to prove the offender was impaired. The Crown must call a toxicologist to establish what has been known for more than 50 years, namely, that the person who is over 80 is impaired. Virtually all toxicologists agree that at 100 milligrams each person's ability to operate a vehicle is impaired.

We propose to eliminate the incentive to refuse by making a person who is over 80, and is the cause of a collision resulting in death or bodily injury, or who refuses to provide a breath sample knowing of the death or bodily harm, subject to the same penalties as a driver who, while impaired by alcohol or drug, causes death or bodily harm.

As for the penalties of impaired driving where there is no death or injury, the government believes that they do not adequately reflect the seriousness of this offence. We are proposing to raise the minimum fine for the first offence to $1,000. When combined with the prohibitions on driving, provincial licence suspensions and higher insurance costs, this should be enough to convince the people not to commit this offence again.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member has given an excellent summary of the impaired driving laws in this country and the developments that have occurred over the years. I particularly enjoyed his comments about the number of defences that have occurred on technicalities with respect to the Breathalyzer test.

I appreciate that what he is trying to say is that the government is simply trying to keep up with the times and with the changes in technology and that the law needs to be altered. I am sure MADD Canada will agree with his comments.

The member indicated a number of pages that were put forward in Martin's Criminal Code, or whatever it is called now, of the number of summaries of defences that have occurred with respect to the Breathalyzer test.

I wonder if the member has any information that might be available from the government as to the number of defences that have been used with respect to the Breathalyzer test that have resulted in dismissals for technicalities.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not have the specific number but it is in the hundreds. It is more difficult to get a conviction on impaired driving than it is a murder conviction.

Before being elected to the House I worked as a loss prevention officer for the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. One of the things I had to do was provide answers to the ICBC, if there was ever a fatal accident, of what the causals were. It often was drug impairment, lack of using seat belts or bad choices. It is a very dangerous choice to drink and drive. It not only puts the driver at risk, it also puts the lives of other Canadians at risk who are sharing the road.

Bill C-32 is good legislation and it would bring us into the 21st century. We need to move forward. I hope all members of the committee will work together to ensure the bill moves quickly through the House.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I think we all share concerns about the harmful effect of driving while under the influence, whether it be alcohol or a controlled substance. They both diminish our faculties.

I look forward to seeing the results of the committee's work. I think everyone agrees with the principle of Bill C-32 but I know there are some concerns with the administration or defining of it. I would like to know if the parliamentary secretary shares these concerns and, if so, if he sees any solutions.

One concern is the question of creating an offence of up to five years imprisonment for possession of a controlled substance while driving. The driver might not have used the substance but it may be in his presence. I have fears about that. I will be speaking later this afternoon and I will discuss that more.

The other concern I would like the member talk about is the question of the drug recognition expert and the question of taking body fluids or blood in the case of an investigation or charges. In rural Canada that work will undoubtedly have to be administered by the RCMP.

The distances from station to station for the RCMP are far apart. They generally do not have staffing in the off hours. The administrative burden that will be put on the RCMP and the costs associated, the costs that will be transferred in this manner to the provinces and the municipalities because they do bear a portion of the policing costs in provinces such as Nova Scotia and I believe in all provinces, will be very high if each detachment needs to have someone trained as a drug recognition expert and be available 24 hours a day. That means that there would need to be multiple officers with that training. Some of these detachments have only three or four officers.

We would then need to have someone with the training to take the blood and body fluid samples in a safe manner. That would require a lot of nursing training or health type training and the person would need to be available on a 24 hour a day period. If not, then we are looking at the transportation of potential abusers, but people who may very well be innocent, of distances of three or four hours or more. This would be very difficult in the administration of this particular program.

I would ask the member if the government has considered these questions. Has the government looked at what it would cost, how it would do it and how it would ensure that the municipalities, cities, rural municipalities and the provinces are not overly burdened with these costs?

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the focus of my speech was on blood alcohol impairment, but as the member points out and as Bill C-32 deals with, it is impairment with drugs as well.

The drug recognition experts, DRE, are at RCMP detachments. It is a problem within our country. The impairment can be caused by a lack of sleep and someone not being safe to drive. Impairment can be caused by the use of prescription drugs, and it can be caused by illegal drugs or alcohol.

If individuals are impaired by whatever the cause and they are not safe to drive, they should not be driving. Therefore, an RCMP officer or a provincial police officer will now be able to ask for a roadside sobriety test. If it is determined that there is an impairment, they would then be going back to the detachment and a DRE would determine what is causing the impairment.

The commitment from the government is to make our communities safer, to make our streets safer, and to lower taxes and provide the dollars in a responsible way where they are needed. That is why we are supporting and providing the tools to the police. We are providing the tools for a cleaner environment and we are providing lower taxes. We want safer communities and we are getting the job done.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary said this bill and this government want to make our streets safer and so on. I do not think there is a member in the chamber that does not wish the same thing. In as much as we all agree on the principle of the bill and it warrants serious consideration and support, the problem that I hear from my constituents over and over, and I am sure other members do as well, is that members with all good intent bring forth legislation, tighten the rules and so on, mandate after mandate. However, I know one famous football player whom I read about a year or so ago who was caught and charged driving under the influence of alcohol and he was let off the hook with a little slap.

I ask the parliamentary secretary if he or his government have any ideas? We can make the laws and improve them continuously, but how do we get them enforced? How do we get them complied with when police officers go out of their way and in harm's way to arrest people, put them through the system, and then find themselves before the courts and the next thing we know they are off with a slap on the hand and our constituents and taxpayers get frustrated? Does the parliamentary secretary and the government have any ideas how we can overcome that?

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we found that the Liberal hug a thug philosophy does not work. We need to make our communities safer. The time for rhetoric and talk is over. The government is committed to taking action. In the past year Canadians can look back to see what has been accomplished by the government and it is enormous. We want to continue it.

Canadians want us to continue to make our communities safer, to clean up the environment, to lower taxes and to be world leaders. Canada is back. Our communities are back. There is a spirit of optimism. We encourage the opposition to work with us to make Canada safer.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is what it is all about. I am trying to work with the member to find means and ways to better safeguard Canadians, but again Conservatives will tell constituents everything they want to hear knowing that they cannot deliver. They have not been delivering on their promises. I am embarrassed that the member responded in the way he did. It is a shame.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is amazing how upset some people get when we are getting things done, but that is why Canadians sent us here. That is why we have the government that we do. I encourage the member to lay aside the past and let us move forward for the good of Canada.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak with regard to Bill C-32 which essentially has two major components. One of which would address for the first time a methodology to use in our criminal justice system to deal with impairment while driving an automobile or plane under the influence of a drug rather than alcohol.

The second part to the bill, which quite frankly is probably more significant in terms of its effectiveness, deals with our existing law regarding impairment because of consumption of alcohol. One of the defences to those charges that has cropped up quite frankly has gotten to the stage of almost being a scandal in this country in terms of the number of times it is used and what I would call the underlying weakness of the jurisprudence that allows for that defence.

Both of these sections are important sections. We need to address them as a legislature and to see if in fact we can more effectively deal with the problem of impaired driving whether it is because of alcohol consumption, as we have traditionally looked at it, or now both a combination of alcohol and drugs or drug impairment on its own.

The first part of this bill is a reincarnation of Bill C-16 from the last Parliament that dealt exclusively with the issue of impairment by drugs. The sections in this bill are replicated from that former bill. Essentially what it attempts to do, which I have some concerns about, is to take us down the road that we followed with regard to impaired driving by alcohol going back now some 30 plus years and using technology, as we did then in the form of the breathalyzer, to identify people who were impaired and to deal with them by way of criminal penalty sanctions.

The difficulty I have is that the existing technology with regard to drug impairment is basically non-existent. It is nowhere near the situation we have with alcohol impairment. Because of the technology we initially developed and have now refined, the assessment of an individual being impaired as a result of the consumption of alcohol is quite clear and scientific.

Generally speaking, and it is in the percentile of 100%, it is irrefutable. Unless the equipment is malfunctioning or the operator is not qualified and has not used the equipment properly, the equipment properly and effectively assesses a person's impairment.

I think we can safely say there are two exceptions to that and a crucial one is when the test is given. If there continues to be some consumption of alcohol between the time the person stops operating the vehicle and the test is administered, it is possible that consumption will bring up the blood alcohol level and in fact take it over the prescribed limit when in fact the accused individual may not have been impaired at the time he or she was operating the vehicle. That is one defence and it stays in.

The second one is where the consumption of alcohol was huge immediately prior to the operation of the vehicle. When the test is given, the person is over the limit but in fact again, because it takes some time for the alcohol to work its way through the system and impair a person from operating a vehicle, that person in fact would not have been impaired at the time of the operation of the vehicle.

This bill, as did Bill C-16, preserves those defences, so if that can be established by evidence there would then be a defence to the charges because people would not have been impaired at the time they were operating the vehicle.

The difficulty we have with the drug impairment attempt that is going into this bill, and again that was in Bill C-16, is that we do not have two things. We do not have the technology to do a quick test, roadside or at a police station, but more importantly, we do not have any standards as to what type of drug will have what type of an effect in terms of impairment and the ability of the human being to operate a vehicle.

Because of the work we did in the last Parliament on Bill C-16 we took a great deal of evidence. In this regard the European Union and a number of countries in Europe are working to try to establish a standard of impairment from the consumption of marijuana or the chemical derivatives. They have not been able to do that up to this point. They believe they are making some advances but they are clearly not there at this stage.

In regard to marijuana specifically, one of the problems we have is that the particular chemical derived from the marijuana plant stays in the system for an extended period of time. This was a defence by one of our Olympians and that was his argument at that time. It saved the day for him. In fact, it is the scientific reality that the chemical substance stays in the system for an extended period of time, so it is going to be very difficult from what we can see at this point, mostly because of the work that has been done in Europe, to set that minimum standard.

The reason this is so important and that I am pursuing this issue with regard to marijuana is that there is no question, and we are hearing from our police officers across the country, from our prosecutors, from people involved in the impaired driving issue, that marijuana after alcohol is clearly the second biggest problem substance that we have. People consume it and then drive a vehicle while impaired. However, we do not have the technology or the science at this point to establish that minimum standard.

We also do not have any equipment that could be used at the roadside or at the police station that would do a quick assessment. That can only be done by way of taking a blood sample or a urine sample. This legislation recognizes that this can only be done by a qualified medical person, a doctor or medical technician which generally would have to occur at a medical clinic or hospital.

The proposal in the bill, as was in Bill C-16, is to establish a system in Canada mimicked after some that have been used in the United States and I believe in England, where we would have specially trained police officers. It would be a three stage approach. Initially the police officer who stopped the vehicle based on reasonable and probable grounds that the driver was operating the vehicle while under the influence of some chemical or drug would do an examination. This may include the traditional ones of walking the line, trying to touch the nose, balancing on one leg, looking at the eyes, and hearing the individual speak, the traditional ones we had before the breathalyzer for alcohol consumption.

If the officer made a determination that the person was clearly suffering from some impairment in terms of being able to operate the vehicle, the officer would then require the person to attend at a police station where he or she would be examined by a specially trained police officer. The language that is used in the statute is that of an “evaluating officer”. This person would be a police officer with general training but would have additional training and this is where I have one of the problems.

Not taking anything away from the individual, but in looking at the training material they use to train this person, I have serious doubts about his or her ability to make this evaluation. The evaluation they are required to make by statute is not only to evaluate the person's impairment, but to evaluate the type of drug was used as well. Was it marijuana, heroin, cocaine, or a prescription drug, legal or illegal? We can go down the list. We heard some evidence about the potential of there being hundreds of drugs. I see this method of evaluation as being a serious flaw.

If the evaluating officer makes a determination, this law would then require the accused person to attend in front of a qualified medical person, either in a clinic or a hospital, where a blood sample would be taken. The legislation then says that the sample could then be admitted in a courtroom to establish the fact that the evaluating officer was correct, that the person had consumed a drug, whatever it was.

Most lawyers who looked at this would ask what good this would do for them when they are in front of a judge and have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the person was impaired.

Wearing the hat of a prosecutor, I would put this evidence forward and I would expect this question from the judge. Why was I giving this information that the individual had X amount of parts per million of a drug in his or her blood? Would that tell the judge anything about the person's ability to operate a motor vehicle? As I said earlier with regard to the work and the research that has been done with respect to impairment by marijuana, the answer from me as the prosecutor would be no. I could not tell the judge that this gave any indication as to whether the person was impaired. Obviously the judge would have to make an early decision.

Now wearing the hat of defence counsel, I would be telling the judge that the evidence was severely prejudicial to my client because it showed he consumed a drug but that was not what he was charged with. He was charged with impairment. The evidence has no value whatsoever toward establishing his impairment. That is the argument I would make as defence counsel.

In most cases the judge would indicate that the evidence was severely prejudicial because it showed the individual was a drug user, but it had no probative value in the courtroom as to the charge in front of the judge. I fear the case would be turfed based on that. That is not even a charter argument. This is evidentiary rules in our courts. Therefore, it has a fundamental flaw.

There is a charter challenge as well. As a result of the limited qualifications of the evaluating officer, the court may very well determine that a person's personal security was invaded, which is one of our fundamental rights in our country. A determination could be made under this section of the charter that it would not be reasonable to make the person give a blood sample, or in some cases a urine sample, because of the basis on which the demand was made. It was made by the evaluating officer, who was not a medical expert by any means and had a limited ability to make an assessment as to whether the drug was marijuana, heroin, or prescription, which may include a legal prescription, had been ingested by the accused.

During the Liberal government, the NDP supported the bill. It was sent it to committee and it did all the investigation. However, at the end of the day, we had serious concerns about whether this part of the bill would survive that challenge. Because of the risk of whether this will survive those challenges in the courtrooms, it also raises the issue as to whether it is worthwhile expending the kinds of dollars for the training that will be necessary to prepare our police officers for this methodology.

Those are our concerns. We will support the bill, even with regard to this part of it, to go to committee. We hope we perhaps we will find some more evidence now. Maybe the work being done in the Europe is more advanced. The last time we looked at this was about a year and a half ago.

I turn to the second part of the legislation, the more important part in terms of its usefulness in our system and in the courts. Finally, after at least 10 years, getting closer to 20 years, there is a manufactured defence in effect, and my friends in the criminal defence bar will hit me for saying this. Unfortunately our courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court, have accepted this defence I think because of poor wording in the code, and I will give them that much credit, when we first passed this. The key wording is one can establish with evidence to the contrary that in fact the person was not impaired.

When I started to practise law, the Breathalyzer was just beginning to be used. At that point, it was generally accepted that if one could establish the machine was not working properly, as it has to be tested in certain ways before it is actually administered, or that the operator was not qualified or did not use it properly, then those defences could be used to establish that the Breathalyzer evidence was unacceptable and the charge could be avoided.

There is no question that those defences should remain. With any system that involves humans, there will be some flaws in it and we have to allow for those defences.

However, what happened was not those two defences or the defence of when the alcohol was consumed. What cropped up was a whole industry of defence lawyers and toxicologists and we would get this “two beer” defence. We would have this sequence.

This is where the two beers defence arises. For most people the consumption of two beers, within a reasonable timeframe of the test being administered, does not put them over the .08 limit. The accused would take the stand say that he or she had only two beers, or one glass of wine, or one shot. Then a friend or an acquaintance, who was with the individual that evening, would take the stand and confirm that. Then a toxicologist would be brought forward at great expense. These defences cost between $5,000 and $10,000. Unfortunately, a judge would have to say, “As I read this section of the code that's contrary evidence” and person would be acquitted. The number of times that has been used has almost become a scandal.

I believe proposed amendments to the sections in the code will remedy that problem. We will finally get the convictions we are missing now. Those individuals who are driving impaired, sometimes repeatedly will be convicted and penalties will imposed. Hopefully, that will reduce the amount of impaired driving in our country.

We will be supporting this bill, at least on second reading, and hopefully addressing some of the problems that I have mentioned in my remarks today.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to add my voice in support of the bill. Impaired driving is a very serious issue facing our roads, our kids and people in the general public.

To share some statistics, in 2003 alcohol and drugs were involved in over 1,257 fatalities, over 43,000 injuries and 61,000 property damage only crashes involving over 245,174 vehicles. The total financial and social cost of these losses are estimated to be almost $1 billion. That is according to a study that was done in 2003. As well, the Ontario drug survey was done in 2003. It showed that close 20% of kids were driving within an hour after smoking cannabis.

Therefore, the intent of the bill is about making our roads safer and about ensuring we have the deterrence in our system so people are not having a few beers then jumping in their cars, heading home and causing accidents.

Countless organizations, MADD being one of them, are supportive of the bill. They want to ensure we make our streets safer and that we have a national perspective. My province of Manitoba is not talking about .08 any more. It is talking about a blood alcohol level of .05. Therefore, some provincial jurisdictions are getting more aggressive.

The member talked about all the charter challenges and the constitutionality of a number of these issues, but we already have a number of safeguards in our system to ensure that charter rights are not violated. We will be looking at putting in place a new way of helping the police forces standardize their whole system of trying to determine if someone is under influence of alcohol or drugs. They are going to standardize the field sobriety test, which is important. They are going to have drug recognition expert evaluations, which will help our police forces. Then there will be the sampling of all bodily fluids when there is consent to do so.

The charter issues that have been brought forward are really a misdirection in trying to tackle the real issue, which is to make our streets safer and to keep the public safe when they are travelling. I support the bill 100%.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think the point my colleague is missing, which is not unusual for the Conservatives when it comes to crime bills, is based on the emotion that we all share; that impaired driving is terrible. One of my children was a victim of an impaired driver. He lost one of his arms. Therefore, I do not need to be dictated to by that government and that party about the emotional aspects of it.

My responsibility here, as is theirs, is to ensure that we put into effect laws that are effective. If we study what has gone on in the United States, where a number of states have used this, there is no evidence that these methodologies have had any practical impact on the numbers of impaired driving due to drug consumption.

Following up on one of the points my friend made, if the government were really serious about dealing with it, why is this bill in front of the House and the private member's bill, which will we will debate this evening, is not being supported by the government as a government bill. It would reduce the .08 to .05? That would have some real effect.

In European countries where they have reduced the .08 to .05, the number of impaired driving charges have been reduced. It gets that right at the prevention end. It stops people from driving because they know that even two beers will put them over the limit.

If the government members were really serious, as opposed to the demagoguery that we get from them so often, that is the bill we would be debating right now, not this evening as a private member's bill.

[Colleen Beaumier, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when the member begins to talk about charter rights, I somehow cannot think that we have to protect charter rights of minorities when they infringe on the rights of majorities. I believe that it is my charter right to have safe streets and a safe society.

I am not sure that the member has done his research, even when it comes to the drug issue. There are all sorts of methods of testing for drug content. A methadone clinic is capable of testing a person immediately. I think if there is a will there is certainly quite an easy way.

I have a large trucking hub in my area. The truckers have successfully challenged this: Canadian truck drivers cannot be forced to go for drug testing. However, if truckers want to drive into the United States, they have to go for testing. This means, I am told, that those who are frequent users of drugs do not even bother trying to go into the States.

We do not know what impairs different individuals and what the difference is between some person's threshold and our own threshold. We cannot have a separate law for everyone.

I will be supporting this bill. I am not sure if this is the correct number or not, but I have heard that more people are killed in a day by drunk and impaired drivers than terrorists kill in a year.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think my colleague from the Liberal Party has missed the commentary in my opening speech. The issue here is not one of the testing. It is the question that we have no standard.

We have no standard, so if we put that evidence, that testing, in front of a court, all it says is that this police officer believes the person was impaired. Maybe it is my years of experience in the courtroom, before the breathalyzer, that have shown this to me. We used to have those cases and they were regularly rejected by our courts. A person would be suspected of being impaired because of alcohol. He was asked to touch his nose, stand on one leg and see if he could balance himself. The police officer listened to his speech to see if he was slurred and looked at the person's eyes to see if they were bloodshot.

We had all of that. That is really what we are talking about here with regard to drugs. We know how ineffective that was in terms of dealing with impaired driving in this country.

I also want to say to the member that if there is anybody in this House who has done his research, it is this person. I have been through it already with the bill that the member's government, the former government, brought in. I do not think there is anyone in the House who has looked at this more closely than I have. I am telling the member that all of that research tells me that there are serious problems with whether this is going to be viable.

Again, if we look to the United States, a number of the states have used this and it has not changed the rate of impairment from drugs on our streets.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening with great interest to the debate. Quite frankly, I am encouraged to hear the broad-based support that the bill seems to have across all parties.

I am a little concerned about some of what the hon. member from the NDP has indicated. It sounds as if in some ways he questions the capacity of our law enforcement officers to conduct this testing in a manner that would conclude there is impairment, or that he questions whether we could train people in a significant enough fashion that they would be competent to complete this task. I do not agree with that assessment. Certainly when officers have a good deal of experience in dealing with impairment, I think they can judge it fairly.

Perhaps the member could expand a little on why he does not feel that properly trained officers would be competent in addressing whether or not somebody is impaired.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will quickly repeat my answer. Perhaps the member did not hear my last comments. I lived through that in the courtroom when we used that methodology. It is exactly the same methodology in terms of evaluating the person's impairment, and at that time, because of alcohol.

What I am saying to the member is that rather than living in the ideological world that the Conservative Party so often lives in, I live in the real world. The real world tells me that the assessment methodology we used 30, 40 or 50 years ago was generally ineffective. I have no reason to believe that it will now be effective against impaired driving because of the consumption of drugs. It did not work on alcohol. I have no particular faith in it working with regard to drugs.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to speak on this subject.

I am generally supportive of the bill. What the bill seeks to do for Canadians is very important. We have great concerns in that on a daily basis we see the terrible and tragic accidents throughout our country that are related to the abuse or use of alcohol while operating a motor vehicle.

The use of drugs, controlled substances, while operating a motor vehicle, whether they be prescribed drugs or illegal drugs, is very dangerous. Sometimes, prescribed drugs used improperly or misused or underused, or used to gain recreational effects in some instances, can cause a person to be not fully capable of controlling a motor vehicle, putting themselves and many other people at risk.

We have to applaud any reasonable attempt to make Canadians safer. I think this bill goes a long way toward that, but I do have some concerns. I have some concerns about the general tenor of flooding the House with many so-called crime bills knowing that it is impossible for the committee to do a proper study of all these bills and make the improvements that are needed, because many improvements are needed in these bills, and then being able to say that the House or the committee is stalling.

If we look at what the bill does, we all agree with it, but there are serious problems. I am sure the justice committee will do a serious job to improve the bill and ensure that we meet the intent of the bill and that we have a law that is operational, can work in the Canadian context and assists in protecting Canadians.

Not everything we have been doing to date is bad, but I think the previous speaker has spoken very well about the two beer defence. There are serious attempts in the bill to reduce the types of defences that can be put at court on drinking and driving. That is a positive approach, but we have to make sure they are going to work, and we have to look at other elements within the bill and make sure they meet their commitments and are operable.

I remember a friend of mine telling me that in his days at law school they had a former justice speaking. They asked the justice if he was in favour of capital punishment. He said that no, generally he was not, but he might be in certain instances, probably not for murder, because the majority of the murder cases that he had seen in his courtroom were related to crimes of passion, one time offences that most likely would not be repeated. However, he did say that in the case of drinking and driving and the sale of drugs to minors he might consider it in that aspect, because the people who do these activities know when they enter into them that they are putting people at risk. They are risking lives.

In the case of drinking and driving, when people have that second or third drink before getting into the vehicle, they know they are putting people at risk. They know that it is an illegal activity, that they are reducing their faculties and that they will be putting themselves in a position where they can seriously harm people and kill and maim. We have to take it seriously.

However, this bill goes a little further. I do have some concerns. One is about creating a new offence of operating a motor vehicle while in possession of “a controlled substance as defined in subsection 2(1) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act”. We might not disagree with that, but then when we think about it, for example, what are the punishments? Five years' imprisonment is possible. If a 17 year old kid has one cigarette of pot and a gun, he would get a lesser charge for the gun than he would get for that one cigarette of pot, whether or not he smoked it. I do not think that is reasonable. I do not think that has been considered seriously.

If somebody is bringing in a whole bunch of heroin, then there are already crimes for transporting or for possession of controlled substances. Why would it become a different offence for having it in our possession when we are driving as opposed to when we are not driving? Does the possession of that controlled substance, if we have not ingested it, smoked it, injected it or whatever, if we have not depleted our faculties, make us more risky drivers? Are we endangering people? I think that is a serious consideration.

The other element we have to consider is what the risk benefits are. If a person is driving down the road with a controlled substance in his or her possession, the charges that person could face for being in possession of that controlled substance can lead to five years in prison, while the controlled substance charges that person might face for simple possession might lead to six months' probation. Will that person be more apt to attempt a dangerous run from the police? I am looking forward to hearing witnesses on those questions and on whether that is a reasonable approach to be taking in this regard.

The other question I would ask is why there would be a different charge or a different test if a person is driving while in possession of a controlled substance or while in possession of alcohol. If a person has consumed the alcohol, that individual would be facing drinking and driving charges, criminal charges. What if the person has not consumed alcohol but simply has an open bottle in the vehicle, or not open? If the person is 19 years of age, in Nova Scotia the person would face no charges if the bottle is not open, but if it is open, that person could face charges. I believe the fine is $300 or something like that.

But in the bill it becomes different if it is a controlled substance. It becomes criminal. It becomes serious, with up to five years' imprisonment if it is a controlled substance, although it might be one of the less dangerous controlled substances. It could be prescription drugs for someone other than the driver, who might be transporting them for someone else. That would be a controlled substance in that case. I do not think this has been considered very well. There should be some discussion.

The other point is on the drug recognition expert. I had a chance to bring this forward a few minutes ago regarding the question of the applicability. The previous speaker from the NDP, who has a lot of experience in the law, raised some concerns about the test, its validity in court and how it would stand up. I will speak more from an application point of view, not having expertise in the justice system.

We live in a huge country. In rural Canada, the RCMP is our primary policing agency.

I should say before I get too far that I will be sharing my time with the member for Welland.

The RCMP does the policing. Let us imagine that at one o'clock in the morning RCMP officers intercept a motor vehicle and believe that the person may have been using a controlled substance. If it is about drinking and driving, it is quite simple and clear as to how the officers would continue. The structures are in place for it. However, they may believe the person has smoked marijuana. The officers have had training or they have not. If they have not, they have to bring that person into contact with somebody who has had the training, a drug recognition expert, in the language of this bill.

A lot of detachments have three or four RCMP officers. Some have fewer. They can be 500 or 600 miles apart or 200 or 300 miles apart from one another. Typically, RCMP detachments are not open or staffed 24 hours a day, so the nearest drug recognition expert in an area like western Nova Scotia with a population of 130,000 could be three or four hours' drive away, if there is one is on duty during those hours. One has to first find a drug recognition expert and then get the driver in the expert's presence in a reasonable time so he or she can assess the effect or presence of drugs.

In that instance, if the drug recognition expert administers the test and believes reasonably that the person has used marijuana, that person then has to be brought to another expert who will extract bodily fluid, saliva, blood or whatever is required. Again, that person requires training. That person may or may not be available.

In certain parts of the country, the health system may or may not be able to take care of those things, but the distances may be long. We could be talking about a person who is completely innocent but who, because of misjudgments, is held for two, four or eight hours, is not able to do whatever activity he or she was going to, whether it was work or another activity, and is in very difficult circumstances. That is from the citizen's point of view.

If we look at it from the RCMP's point of view, the administrative burden would be huge. It would mean the RCMP would need to have a multitude of these experts in all detachments, or reasonably close by, on an operational basis for 24 hours a day. When we talk about another 1,000 RCMP officers for Canada, that will not do it. That is not enough. We will need a lot more. As well, if we look at the cost to the provinces of doing this, we can see that it is very high.

However, I do want to repeat that I support the principle of this bill. I think we have to find a way of doing it. We have to find the technology and do the research in a way that allows us, as we do with the breathalyzer, to assess these individuals in a way that would stand up in a court of law.

I see that I have run out of time. I went through two of ten items, but I know that my colleagues will discuss the others.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, one thing my friend from West Nova was asking was why we are treating controlled substances differently than open liquor or impaired driving because of alcohol consumption. It is because they are still illegal substances and one can be criminally charged with their possession. It is for that very reason there will be harsher penalties if one is driving under the influence of drugs or is in the possession of drugs while driving. That is the very logic behind it. I think all Canadians get it and want to see this bill move forward.

There is one point the member made on which I kind of agree with him. Some of us represent large rural ridings that have police forces that are fairly scattered and far away from the city centres where some of the experts would be. I am encouraging the government, and I know that Parliament is looking at this, to make sure that any of these people who are trained in drug enforcement and in evaluating whether or not people are under the influence of controlled substances be more readily available in some of the local detachments or in centralized areas where we can have that expertise available to us in a timely fashion.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, on the question of the possession of controlled substances, the member has missed some very important details.

If we look at the controlled substances in Canadian law, there are schedules. There are some that have different variations. We do not look at the penalties for possession, distribution or use of marijuana in the same way as we do for crack cocaine, crystal meth, or heroin. They are dealt with in codes. They are dealt with at different levels with different punitive measures.

Here it refers to possession of controlled substances. We are not talking about the other areas where it is already illegal to possess them. We are saying that having them in one's possession while driving, whether or not one has used them while driving, could involve up to another five years' punishment.

In this case, the substance may not be a controlled substance because it could be an illegal substance but not prescribed to that person. That person could be bringing it for someone else.

There are many details that we have to seriously look at in this bill. I believe the justice committee will do a good job. I am encouraging it to do so. I will support this bill at this reading so that the justice committee can hear from the experts and look at how to improve this bill to make it operable and help improve the lives and safety of Canadians.

[Lui Temelkovski, Liberal, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I heard the hon. member mention that he had a number of issues that he had wanted to raise but that he had only brought up about five.

I am interested in hearing more about the pressing issues in his riding, as they are in my riding, when it comes to driving impaired and young people driving offensively.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, there is a larger problem. With the information and public education provided by organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the risks of drinking and driving are well understood. If we look at the punishments that are now in place for young drivers, it is not a picnic. In Nova Scotia, for a person 17 or 18 years old who is caught with a blood alcohol level over the legal limit, number one is the loss of his or her licence for a year and number two is the difficulty in getting the licence back. Getting the full licence back takes over two years, plus, at that point, the person has to redo all the courses, which is a very expensive process, about $500 or $600. Acquiring insurance at that point is going to be around $5,000 for the average vehicle for a person 18 years of age.

There are punitive measures, plus a criminal record. If that person is interested in a career, he or she will have to face the fact that he or she has a criminal record and that society considers it to be very serious. There is no excuse anymore for drinking and driving. People consider it to be one of the most serious offences one can make.

I commend the organizations that are working out there. Again I will support this bill, but I do not think we should give the false perception that people get an easy ride now.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the fine member for Peterborough.

It is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-32. It is an important piece of legislation that will close some serious holes in our impaired driving laws.

In 2003 impaired driving cost our society $10.5 billion, but there were other more significant costs. In that same year impaired driving took the lives of 1,200 Canadians and over 47,000 Canadians were injured, many of them very seriously. That is more than three people killed and over 125 injured every single day. How do we put a price tag on that? I strongly believe that we can prevent many of these tragedies in the future and it certainly is our duty to try. The legislation introduced today will give police and prosecutors the tools they need to rid our streets of drunk and drugged drivers. Let me begin by discussing the drugged drivers.

In researching this issue I was terrified by the statistics relating to teen drugged driving. According to a 2005 report on drug use by Ontario students, almost 20% of all student drivers reported driving after smoking marijuana. By grade 12 that figure is over 25% and they are not driving alone; 22% of all high school students from grade 9 to grade 12 reported that within the last year, they had been a passenger in a car driven by someone who smoked marijuana.

Of course, it is not just teenagers. A Senate report in 2002 found that between 5% and 12% of all drivers may drive while high. Drugged driving is obviously a very serious problem and as of right now, law enforcement is all but powerless to stop it. Police officers' hands are almost completely tied when it comes to collecting evidence. As Sergeant Brian Bowman of Toronto explained to CBC News:

If we see someone driving erratically, we really have a high hill to climb to prove it's from drug-impaired driving. We almost need the smoke to waft out of the car or have the pills fall out onto the road.

The police cannot even demand a physical sobriety test. This legislation will close that loophole. With this legislation police will now be able to request the performance of a roadside standardized field sobriety test when there is reasonable suspicion that a driver has a drug in his or her body.

They will also be able to demand a drug recognition expert evaluation to be performed at the police station. The DREE system has worked well outside Canada and it will work well here as well. Failure to comply with these demands will be considered an offence under the Criminal Code, just like refusing to take a breathalyzer test. A final deterrent to drug impaired driving will be added by making it a criminal offence to be in control of a motor vehicle while in possession of a controlled substance.

Now let me turn to the drunk drivers. Drunk driving was once winked at, but no longer. Today everyone recognizes that it is a deadly, serious problem. OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino has noted that the leading cause of criminal death in my home province of Ontario is not murder, it is drunk driving.

In my community, I had the opportunity to sit down with members of the Niagara Regional Police Service, to work with local MADD organizations and to meet on a number of occasions with their communications and public relations person, Chris George. In 2003 the Niagara Regional Police Service arrested 28 people during its month long holiday RIDE program. The Niagara OPP laid 99 charges of impaired driving in 2006 alone. The number in my riding continues to increase.

Drugged and drunk driving is listed as one of the top three justice concerns for the people of my community. This bill delivers on that concern. Bill C-32 toughens penalties for drunk drivers and helps prosecutors secure the convictions that are needed to keep the roads safe for responsible drivers.

We have strengthened the mandatory minimum penalties for first, second and third offences. The maximum penalty for impaired driving causing bodily harm will now be 10 years, and for causing death it will be life imprisonment. This is simply the right thing to do.

Our bill will help prosecutors get convictions. When prosecuting drunk drivers, the crown has objective scientific evidence from approved instruments that measure blood alcohol content.

In the 2005 case of R. v. Boucher, the Supreme Court ruled that the credibility of such testimony cannot be called into question by breathalyzer results, not even if someone blew more than twice the legal limit.

The two beers defence is a joke. Testimony from one's drinking buddies should not be allowed to distort objective scientific measures.

Getting this legislation passed should not be a partisan fight. In fact, in 1999 a Liberal dominated justice committee released a report on the issue. The committee's recommendations included the following: allowing imprisonment for life following conviction for impaired driving causing death; allowing for a maximum of 10 years' imprisonment where an accident causes bodily harm; and authorizing the taking of a blood sample for the purposes of testing for the presence of alcohol or drugs based on reasonable and probable grounds. Those were all good ideas agreed to by the Liberal MPs but good ideas nonetheless.

In 2003 the Department of Justice released a consultation document on the issue noting that drug recognition expert programs had been successfully implemented in many American jurisdictions. It was a very good point.

Bill C-32 will protect Canadians from impaired drivers. I encourage all members to support it. We have the opportunity to reach across all party lines and put forward legislation that is tough, that is fair, that is right and that is current with what is happening in jurisdictions around the world.

[Lui Temelkovski, Liberal, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to the member, who made some good points. I would like to ask him a question with regard to drug recognition.

In my previous career in the insurance and investment business, we did a lot of medicals. The medicals could detect the presence of drugs in a person many months prior to taking the medical.

Could the member be more definitive on the way this will be tested? What amounts are being looked at in the bill for drunk driving as well as drug intoxication?

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure exactly what the member was asking.

However, in specific relation to driving while under the influence of drugs, currently there is no opportunity for the police or for any crown prosecutors to be able to convict anyone of a drug related driving offence. Bill C-32 creates a platform and an opportunity in three specific areas to do that. One is suspicion, two is possession, and obviously the third relies upon the fact that they will be able to use a standardized test that is used in many other jurisdictions in North America. They will go to the police station and under reasonable suspicion the individual will be tested and evaluated to see if in fact the individual is under the influence of a drug or certainly has driven under the influence of a drug.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join this debate and speak in favour of Bill C-32, a bill that amends the Criminal Code in relation to impaired driving.

A great deal has already been said about the provisions of the bill. I do not wish to go over the same ground. Instead, I want to focus on some of the objections to the legislation that have appeared in the media regarding the bill.

First, there have been some who question whether the bill is constitutional with respect to the drug impaired driving provisions of the bill. I remind the House that this was extensively canvassed when Bill C-16 was considered.

Of course, no government will present to the House legislation that it considers is going to violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, unless it is convinced that the bill will be upheld as a reasonable limit on those rights. The previous government obviously considered the bill charter compliant or it would not have introduced Bill C-16.

When Bill C-16 was in committee, the then minister of justice, a well known human rights advocate, in his opening remarks on the bill addressed the issue of charter compliance. He said:

Let me deal for a moment with some charter considerations. We know that the demands for alcohol breath tests on approved screening devices at roadside, without a right to contact counsel, have been found justifiable by the courts under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, pursuant to the section 1 demonstrable justification limitation on a right.

The right to counsel must be given following the demand for an alcohol breath test on an approved instrument back at the station and before the approved instrument testing is done.

I anticipate that the same practice would prevail for the DRE evaluations envisaged under Bill C-16. With Bill C-16, we have tried to closely parallel the grounds that our prerequisites for making alcohol breath test demand. I believe that Bill C-16 offers good and important solutions that will be found justifiable under the charter.

Later, in response to a question he went further:

No, I think the court would apply the generic approach with respect to whether a limit on a right is justifiable under the circumstances, and then they would go into the four-part proportionality test.

They would ask themselves, is there a pressing and substantial objective? They would come to the conclusion, in my view, that there is a substantial and pressing objective, which is of course, at the bottom line, the saving of lives.

They would then look to see whether the means chosen were appropriate for the purpose or objective sought to be secured, as the other part of the proportionality test. I think the court would conclude here that this is a proportional remedy for the objective sought to be secured.

I believe the House can be assured that the requirement that a driver perform standard field sobriety tests at the roadside which are relatively brief will be upheld in the same way the roadside screening for alcohol has been upheld.

Similarly, the tests back at the station which will be performed by a trained officer are analogous to the test on an approved instrument.

I know many, if not most, members of the House would like to have an instrument that would measure quickly the concentration of various drugs just like the approved instruments that measure blood alcohol concentration.

The technology simply does not exist and, until it does, we will have to rely on various tests such as the reaction of the eyes to light, blood pressure, pulse and muscle tone on which the trained officer bases his opinion of which drug or combination of drugs and alcohol has caused the impairment. That opinion has to be validated by finding the drug in the person when bodily fluid is sampled.

Another objection to the proposed legislation's constitutionality was made by the president of the Ottawa Defence Lawyers Association reported in the Globe and Mail. He objected to the proposed offence of refusing to provide a breath sample when a person has been involved in a crash which will be punished in the same way as impaired driving causing bodily harm or death. He said:

There is no connection between the fact that you refuse to provide bodily substances and the accident itself. If you refuse, you have no defence.

When a person is charged with impaired driving causing death or bodily harm, the Crown has to establish the impairment and that the driving caused the accident.

The new offence will require the Crown to prove the refusal and then prove that the driver knew or ought to have known that he or she had caused an accident that had caused death or bodily harm.

This offence is modelled on the offence of failure to stop at the scene of an accident. The mental element is the intention to frustrate the police investigation.

In the case of flight, the person simply tries to avoid the police. In the case of refusal, the person refuses to provide a breath sample, the breath sample evidence necessary to determine whether the person was over .08 or in the case of a drug the person refuses to perform the test or to provide the bodily sample to determine whether the drug is actually present in the body.

Of course, in most accident situations the person will be well aware that there has been an accident. The police will still have to have reason to suspect the person has alcohol or drug in their system before making the demand.

Finally, I note that some of the users of medical marijuana claim that this legislation is aimed at them and will prevent them from driving their cars.

Russell Barth, quoted in the Edmonton Sun and other newspapers and described as a medical marijuana user and member of the National Capital Reformers, said that, “Discriminating against us based on our medication is much like discriminating against us based on the colour of our skin”.

In fact, medical marijuana users will be treated like other persons who take prescribed and over the counter drugs. People take all kinds of drugs for legitimate medical reasons. The question is whether they are impaired by that drug. If they can take their medicine and still pass the standard field sobriety test, they can drive. If they cannot, then they had better find someone to drive them around.

The offence of driving while in possession of an illicit drug also specifically provides that the person must be doing so without legitimate excuse. Clearly, persons who have been admitted to the medical marijuana scheme have a legitimate excuse to transport a supply of marijuana with them and would not be caught by this new offence.

I believe the bill is a balanced response to a very serious problem. I believe it is in fact long overdue. The minister in his speech made it clear that the government was prepared to consider any amendments that will strengthen the bill that the standing committee may suggest after hearing from witnesses.

I urge the members to give the bill second reading. I also urge the standing committee, which has a heavy workload, to give this bill priority. It will undoubtedly save thousands of Canadians from being injured or killed by impaired drivers.

[Lui Temelkovski, Liberal, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member if there is any percentage increase in the number of convictions that are expected that he is aware of from the bill. What is the percentage increase of convictions that is expected and are there any figures that he has in terms of sentencing that will stem directly from the bill?

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of any specific percentage. However, I am aware that the bill will specifically prohibit the defence called the two beer defence. Quite frankly this defence should not exist. I know that this defence actually circumvents the intent of our impaired driving laws that currently exist.

When persons bring in a few of their buddies who have been drinking with them, and have them testify that they only drank two beers and therefore could not possibly be impaired, that is not a defence that should be credible before the eyes of the court and not something that Canadians should accept.

I cannot speak to exact percentages, but when I speak to law enforcement officials, when I speak to representatives of MADD Canada, and when I speak to victims of drunk driving, they cannot believe that a defence like that exists in Canada. They want it gone. They want the perpetrators, the people who repeatedly drive impaired, brought to justice. That is why everyone should support the bill.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part today in the debate on Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (impaired driving), which is now before the House. This bill offers us an opportunity to look into a serious problem in society, one that is often in the headlines. We all know that drunk driving is an irresponsible act. A lot of preventive work is being done, in fact, to reduce the occurrence of this phenomenon. Unfortunately, there are still incidents in which an individual who is driving while impaired takes the lives of people on our roads, including, very sadly, young children.

Bill C-32 is therefore meant to respond to this situation by providing the police with tools to make their job easier when it comes to gathering evidence for laying a charge against an impaired driver. More specifically, it is aimed at people driving under the influence of drugs, such as marijuana.

The impaired driving problem goes back years, if not decades. A number of studies have considered the question and suggested ways in which the problem can be addressed. I would note that in 1999, the Standing Committee on Justice submitted the report entitled “Toward Eliminating Impaired Driving”, in which it was recognized that drugs could be a cause of accidents and that we had to find better methods of detecting them. It also stated that we had to improve the process of gathering evidence to allow for people driving under the influence of drugs to be prosecuted.

At that time, the committee identified two major obstacles: first, the absence of a clear definition of what constitutes “reasonable grounds”, the basis on which a police officer administers a test to a driver to detect drugs; and second, the apparent lack of a single non-invasive test for detecting drugs. Given the relative difficulty of the tests that have to be done, the committee suggested that the Charter implications of testing be taken into account. One of the recommendations made in the report was that blood samples be taken if the police officer had “reasonable grounds” for doing so.

The obstacles identified by the committee were also recognized by the Senate committee, which proposed at the time that more studies be done of the driving habits of drivers under the influence of drugs, a reliable and rapid testing tool be developed, and the blood alcohol level be lowered.

Four years later, the Minister of Justice issued a study report that came out of the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Justice. The study, entitled “Drug-Impaired Driving: Consultation Document”, suggested finding a legislative way of compelling drivers to take screening tests administered by police officers.

To that end, the document suggested setting a legal limit for drugs and legislating to allow police to administer a screening test. An expert on site could, with “reasonable grounds”, administer a test on the offending driver and then, if the test was positive, investigate further by taking a bodily fluid sample. The results would have been given by another expert to the closest police station. The tests and police testimony would be used as evidence to charge the driver.

However, the document stresses the importance of considering the Charter in legislating to amend the Criminal Code with regard to requests for bodily fluid samples and the offending driver's rights to consult a lawyer. Bill C-32, which the Liberals introduced on April 26, 2004, addressed these concerns, but died on the order paper in May 2004 when the election was called.

Reintroduced as C-16 in November 2004, the bill again died on the order paper a year later. The new Bill C-32, which happens to have the same number as the original and was introduced by the Conservative government, contains essentially the same provisions but, for ideological reasons, increases penalties for drivers found guilty of impaired driving.

I know that all the members of this House recognize that impaired driving remains one of the criminal offences most likely to cause death or injury to others. As I explained earlier, this is the third time this bill has been introduced in order to deal with the problem of impaired driving.

The Conservative bill is similar to the old Bill C-16 tabled in the previous Parliament. In short, it suggests the following three things. First, it would require people suspected of driving under the influence to take an alcohol or drug test ordered by police officers at the arrest site, that is to say, at the side of the road. Second, it authorizes experts to take samples of bodily fluids, something that is not in the current Criminal Code. Refusal to comply would constitute a criminal offence, just like refusal to take a breathalyser test. Third, the bill would limit the evidence that can be introduced in court to cast doubt on the way the breathalyser was used or the results of the blood alcohol tests.

This is often called the “two beer” defence, where the accused states that he or she had consumed only one or a particular number of drinks over a certain period of time and therefore could not possibly have had a blood alcohol reading as high as what the test said.

The government also wants to stiffen the sentences and introduce life imprisonment instead of five years for infractions causing the death of another person. To that are added the fines that are adjusted to reflect the number of repeat offences by the driver in question: $1,000 for a first offence instead of $600; 30 days in custody for a second offence instead of 14 days, and 120 days in custody for a third offence instead of 90 days.

I am deputy justice critic and, like our party, I think that this is a very important bill because it is intended to provide the tools that the police need to fight the impaired driving problem effectively. However, it is essential for us to review certain points in the bill because the proposed additions should be studied in order to determine whether they really will be effective.

In the course of the work of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, I would like to meet with experts and groups to shed light on the following concerns about which I want to inform the House—

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

I am very sorry to interrupt the hon. member in the middle of her speech but it is now 2 o’clock and we need to go on to members’ statements. The hon. member will have 13 minutes to finish her speech later.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (impaired driving) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

Prior to oral question period, the hon. member for Châteauguay—Saint-Constant had the floor. She has 13 minutes to complete her remarks. The hon. member now has the floor.

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we were debating Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (impaired driving).

As the deputy justice critic and like my party, I consider the bill very important because it aims to provide the instruments required to enable police to fight impaired driving effectively. I do think, however, that we must look more closely at certain elements of this bill, as the proposed additions warrant analysis to ensure their real effectiveness.

Among the concerns I would like to share with the House is my hope of meeting experts and groups in the course of the deliberations of the Standing Committee on Justice who can shed light on the following points. First, as this committee's report entitled “Toward Eliminating Impaired Driving" rightly pointed out, the nature and the legislation pertaining to the concept of “reasonable grounds” used by the police to have people tested must be defined. This definition would be vital should a driver suspected of driving while impaired refuse, because it would become a criminal offence. This is in fact what the current bill is proposing, but it remains fuzzy as to the “reasonable grounds” used by the police.

In addition, it would seem basic to find a proven screening test that is both quick and non invasive. Do we have the technology? Which drugs are we screening for? I think this warrants our attention, since, with the variety of drugs currently available and their various effects on the human body, it becomes increasingly relevant to look at the methods and scientific processes used in screening.

But again, how are we going to distinguish between illicit drugs and legal drugs, prescription medications, that is? A person can be in legal possession of those medications, but the person's faculties may be impaired by their effects, effects that are clearly stated in the warnings given about the medications.

And then, in logistical terms, do we actually have the equipment that would enable us to do a simple roadside test for all drugs, as we do for alcohol with the breathalyzer? Let us recall that the bill would authorize the police to do a drug test during a roadside spot check. It is therefore important to have very effective, tested tools, to keep potential legal challenges to a minimum. As well, this must be done with utmost respect for the spirit of the Charter, and they must be as constitutional as possible. We often think of taking a blood sample as an intrusive action. In addition, there is the fact that it sometimes takes a long time to get the results of a blood analysis, so the offender has to wait to know whether charges will be laid against him or her.

As well, in legal terms, all of these complications have to be avoided so the bill does not end up in interminable court challenges. As members probably know, impaired driving, particularly driving with a blood alcohol level over 80, is one of the offences in the Criminal Code that is most difficult to prove. As I noted earlier, the “two beer” defence is a perfect example.

Let us also not forget the prohibition set out in clause 8(3) and 8(5) on using oral testimony alone to defend against an incorrect charge. We should give this our full attention in order to determine whether it is valid.

Last, in social terms, impaired driving awareness campaigns have in fact had some success in reducing this kind of offence. Will there be financial and human resources allocated, however, for an education campaign about driving while impaired by drugs?

We must also not forget that the higher fines proposed by Bill C-32 will certainly have a greater effect on lower income brackets in the population than on the more well-off members of society.

These are a few points that show, beyond any doubt, how important it is to work on this bill and make it into something even better.

I repeat that the Bloc Québécois takes this matter very seriously and will participate in developing standards and measures that are intelligent and effective for achieving the desired results. As well, we support initiatives to provide law enforcement agencies with concrete and effective methods for enforcing laws that are designed to deal with driving while impaired by alcohol and other drugs.

That is why we are prepared to support Bill C-32, so that it can be referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. The committee would then be able to study the bill in depth and call witnesses who could offer their expertise. As well, it could propose the amendments that it thought necessary in order to make Bill 32 even more effective.

I will add that we still have reservations about some aspects of this bill, which I described earlier. I therefore hope that the government will work constructively with all opposition parties so that those reservations are taken into consideration and the result is useful and effective legislation.

To conclude, therefore, I hope that all of the points I have raised will be addressed by witnesses and experts who will respond to them when they appear before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in the near future.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague on her excellent presentation, which addressed what needs to be said about this bill and outlines the Bloc's position on it.

Is the hon. member aware of any such legislation elsewhere in the world? Does she know whether there are plans to examine that legislation to find out what results it has had in relation to this specific sort of action?

[Carole Freeman, Bloc, Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, QC]

I thank my colleague for his question. In the United States, the breathalyzer offers many options.

However, with regard to studies on drugs, we will need to check with expert witnesses. That is what the Standing Committee on Justice and Human RIghts was preparing to do.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-32, an act to amend the Criminal Code to strengthen the enforcement of drug impaired driving offences in Canada.

On November 4, 2004, the former justice minister under the Liberal government introduced Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (impaired driving) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. This new legislation builds on Bill C-16 but includes stronger penalties than our bill had proposed.

Bill C-32, the Conservatives' proposed reforms to the Criminal Code, include increasing penalties. Drivers would be charged if in possession of illicit drugs. Drivers with blood alcohol levels exceeding .08 would face a life sentence penalty in the case of causing death and a maximum 10 year sentence in the case of causing bodily harm. These provisions are in addition to existing provisions that hold an alcohol or drug impaired driving offence that causes bodily harm to be punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment and that such an offence that causes death is punishable by life imprisonment.

Impaired drivers would face higher mandatory minimum penalties. For a first offence, the fine would increase from $600 to $1000. For a second offence, sentences would increase from 14 days mandatory prison to 30 days minimum. For a third offence, prison sentences would increase from 90 days minimum to 120 days minimum. When the offence is punishable on summary conviction, the maximum term of imprisonment would increase from 6 months to 18 months.

The bill would also provide more tools for the police. Police would be able to demand that a person suspected of driving while impaired by alcohol or a drug participate in a sobriety test at the roadside and police would be able to demand that a person suspected of driving while impaired by a drug participate in physical tests and bodily fluid sample tests.

The Criminal Code currently makes it an offence to drive a motor vehicle when one's ability is impaired by alcohol or a drug, or a combination of alcohol and drugs. There is a further offence with respect to alcohol while driving while one's blood alcohol limit exceeds the legal limit of .08%.

The anomaly is that currently there is no legal drug limit. There are non-quantifiable tests such as erratic driving and witness testimony. If the driver voluntarily participates, results of a drug test are admissible but this a very rare occurrence. As a consequence, police powers for obtaining evidence of drug impaired driving are very limited.

It is urgent that Parliament address drug impaired driving. The 2002 Senate special committee report on illegal drugs, “Cannabis: Our position for Canadian Public Policy”, found that between 5% and 12% of drivers may operate a motor vehicle while under the influence of cannabis. Further, a survey by the Traffic Injury Research Foundation revealed that in 2002 almost 20% of Canadian drivers had taken the wheel less than two hours after consuming a potentially impairing drug. This included both legal and illegal drugs. These statistics and findings must be reversed.

In 1999, I chaired the justice committee when we studied the issue of impaired driving and prepared a report entitled, “Toward Eliminating Impaired Driving”. The committee was very frustrated with the appreciation that drugs play a contributing role in motor vehicle accidents but that there were no practical legal limits to test for drugs.

There is no scientific consensus on the threshold drug concentration levels in the body that cause impairment making driving hazardous. Unlike the Breathalyzer tests used for alcohol, there is no objective test to measure drug impairment. Further, there is no measurable link between drug impairment and drug quantity. In addition, traces of some drugs could remain in the body for weeks. For instance, the active ingredient in cannabis can be detected for up to four weeks, although its impairing effects do not last. Because there is no scientifically proven threshold, it is not possible to propose a legal limit.

Because there is no clear drug limit testing, a drug recognition expert, DRE, is acknowledged as a necessity.

The lack of authority for police to make a demand for drug testing was a concern that was raised in a number of credible submissions to our committee, such as the Canadian Bar Association, the Province of Ontario, the Canadian Automobile Association and others, who called for expansion of police powers to allow a demand for drug testing.

The committee had concerns about drafting such provisions. Parliament would need to provide legislative guidance on what would constitute reasonable and probable grounds to believe that the offence has occurred. Further, the power to demand bodily samples for drug testing, such as blood, would be intrusive and require consideration of potential violations of the Charter of Rights.

Notwithstanding that, the committee in recommendation 12 suggested a Criminal Code amendment to allow a judge to authorize the taking of a blood sample to test for the presence of alcohol or drugs based on reasonable and probable grounds that an impaired driving offence has been committed. The committee also recommended consultation with the provinces and territories to develop legislation aimed at better obtaining evidence against suspected drug impaired drivers.

The Department of Justice consulted extensively with the provinces and territories, following which the Liberal government introduced two identical pieces of legislation in two subsequent parliaments to deal with this problem. Indeed, the Liberal Party takes impaired driving very seriously. Unfortunately, both Bill C-32 and Bill C-16 died on the order paper when elections were called in November 2004 and 2005 respectively. The Conservatives have reintroduced very similar legislation, with stronger penalties, however.

Passage of the new Bill C-32 will be a significant step toward making roads safer and protecting the public. It will give the police the authority to demand standardized field sobriety tests at the roadside. The officer must have reasonable suspicion of alcohol or a drug in the body before making the demand. The standard test involves walking heel to toe, following with the eyes the officer's hand movement, and balancing on one leg with the other leg held in front about six inches off the ground.

These roadside tests take about 10 minutes. If the driver fails the roadside test, the officer then would have reasonable grounds to demand a breath test on an approved instrument in the case of alcohol. In the case of a drug, the officer would have reasonable grounds to demand an evaluation by an officer certified to do drug recognition expert or DRE tests back at the police station.

The purpose of the evaluation is to identify the class of drugs, if any, that is causing impairment. The evaluation further involves physical tests and checking of vital signs. This evaluation takes about 45 minutes. Following the identification of a class of drugs, the officer could then demand a sample of a bodily fluid, urine, blood or saliva, to test for the presence of a drug.

Refusal to comply with a police order to submit to a roadside sobriety test or to an evaluation at the police station, or to provide a bodily fluid sample, would constitute a criminal offence, just as it is now an offence to refuse a police order to submit to an alcohol breath test.

The idea with the drug impaired driving investigation is not to prove that a concentration of a particular drug is exceeded and that therefore the person is impaired. As previously indicated, there would be few drugs for which there would be a scientific consensus on the concentration level at which there would be impairment for the general population of drivers.

The bill proposes no legal limits for the wide range of drugs. Instead, the idea is to provide for the investigation of a driver's drug impairment by observing physiological symptoms that are unique to a particular class of drugs, and then to confirm with a bodily fluid sample whether the drug was indeed present.

If the tests do not show impairment, the driver is free to go. If the officers see a medical condition, they can obtain medical help.

The combination of steps, that is, the police officer observing the driver's ability to perform the simple tasks of the roadside standardized field sobriety test, the results of the more comprehensive testing by the drug recognition expert, and the confirmation by the independent laboratory analysis of the presence of the drug identified by the DRE as causing the impairment, will provide the necessary checks and balances.

Let us consider the charter considerations. We know that the demands for alcohol breath tests on approved screening devices at roadside, without a right to contact counsel, have been found justifiable by the courts under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, pursuant to the section 1 demonstrable justification limitation on a right.

The right to counsel must be given following the demand for an alcohol breath test on an approved instrument back at the station and before the approved instrument testing is done. It is anticipated that the same practice would prevail for the DRE evaluations envisaged under Bill C-32.

I would suggest that there are aspects of the bill that need further consideration. I do express reservations regarding the new offence of driving while in possession of an illegal drug, where any person found in possession of a controlled substance while operating or in the care or control of a motor vehicle, vessel, aircraft or sailing equipment is guilty of an offence. This provision would apply whether the person is in personal possession of the drug or the drug is simply in the vehicle, provided that the individual knowingly had possession of the drug without lawful excuse for such possession.

I agree with those who claim that this new offence does not belong within Bill C-32 as there is no connection between possession of a drug and impairment and possession of a drug that is already prohibited under section 4 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Of necessity there will have to be an educational component of this new impaired driving strategy, under either the justice or the health department. Individuals using marijuana may or may not know that they could be impaired and should take this legislation very seriously. Individuals taking prescription or off the shelf drugs may not understand that they could come within the boundaries of this legislation and must ensure that they do not operate a motor vehicle while influenced by such drugs.

I have every confidence that NGOs such as MADD will continue to put out relevant and compelling information in this respect. The federal government should either do the same thing or provide funding assistance to organizations such as MADD to do so.

Impaired driving continues to be a scourge on our society. I will continue to support legislation that will help not only to reduce it but to eventually and ultimately eradicate such conduct.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as the member is aware with regard to cannabis, for instance, the active ingredient is THC or tetrahydrocannabinol. I understand that it actually can be detected in one's system for up to four weeks, yet the impairment caused by using the drug may not in fact last very long at all.

This raises an interesting question. To have these kinds of charges stand up, do we have to demonstrate in the courts that not only is it detected in the system but it was present at a time when the person was impaired? It has to be concurrent. It would appear that this may be a significant problem with this drug and perhaps with others, simply because the science is not there on how to determine that persons not only had it in their system but in fact were impaired at the time that they had it in their system.

I wonder if the member could help us on that one.

[John Maloney, Liberal, Welland, ON]

As I referenced in my speech, Mr. Speaker, there is no legal limit. I referenced the situation with THC and cannabis.

Admittedly, the substance in an individual's system can exist for up to four weeks, but there are also physical signs and physical conditions when the individual is pulled over on the side of the road and given the field test. He is then taken to the station and receives the DRE analysis, the expert analysis, which takes roughly three-quarters of an hour. The combination of all of these will conclude whether in fact there is impairment of that individual at that specific time. The existence of THC alone will not do so.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to resume discussing Bill C-32.

First of all, I want to congratulate the Bloc Québécois justice critic, the member for Hochelaga, and the deputy critic, the member for Châteauguay—Saint-Constant, for their presentation. Both gave a very good summary of the Bloc Québécois' position on Bill C-32, which is a worthwhile initiative but which must be able to answer the questions that the public and Bloc Québécois members have about its implementation.

I will read the summary of Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (impaired driving) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts. The summary gives a good outline of the scope of the bill and the questions it will raise:

This enactment amends the Criminal Code:

(a) to create an offence of operating a motor vehicle while in possession of a controlled substance as defined in subsection 2(1) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act;

(b) to authorize specially trained peace officers to conduct tests to determine whether a person is impaired by a drug or a combination of alcohol and a drug;

(c) to authorize the taking of bodily fluids to test for the presence of alcohol or a drug;

(d) to create an offence of operating a motor vehicle with a concentration of alcohol in the blood that exceeds 80 mg of alcohol in 100 mL of blood and causing bodily harm or death to another person;

(e) to clarify what evidence a person accused of driving with a concentration of alcohol in the blood that exceeds 80 mg of alcohol in 100 mL of blood can introduce to raise a doubt that they were not committing the offence;

(f) to create an offence of refusing to provide a breath sample when the accused knows or ought to know that the accused’s operation of a motor vehicle caused an accident resulting in bodily harm to another person or death;

(g) to increase the penalties for impaired driving.

The Bloc Québécois is in favour of this initiative. Nonetheless, we have to allow enough time for the standing committee to address the questions raised by this bill.

The possession or consumption of certain substances constitutes an offence under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. However, we should not limit this to the drugs we read about in the newspaper and see on the news, we should also think about medication.

Many questions remain on the implications of using prescription medication. It is important for the standing committee to be able to ask experts all these questions.

I will remind hon. members later, because this is not the first time that Parliament or the standing committee is addressing this issue.

Since 1999, there have been many reports and questions. There is still no legislation because we have to take into account the fact that people use prescription medication and that the medication detected in their blood can resemble certain drugs. This could cause them some problems as far as criminal law is concerned.

The bill would also authorize peace officers to conduct tests at the site of the accident, incident or offence. Breathalyzer technology works and has proven its effectiveness in court. Nevertheless, it has weaknesses that make it possible to challenge the findings. We have the technology to conduct tests. Can we do the same to test for drugs? Are our equipment and tools good enough to bring adequate admissible evidence before the courts? Questions were raised during studies conducted by various committees in the 1990s, and the same is true today. I will summarize these questions later on.

The bill mentions authorizing the taking of bodily fluids to test for the presence of alcohol or a drug.

Since 1999, various committees have addressed this issue, especially with respect to admissible evidence of drug consumption, and have found that the best solution is a blood test. However, as we know, there are all sorts of constitutional challenges related to taking blood samples. Once again, the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights will have to answer a lot of questions when the time comes to study this bill.

The Bloc's position is simple. We support this bill, but we want to make sure all of the expert witnesses appear before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. We would like to see new technology for admissible evidence that is easier to use than blood sampling, as we have seen with breathalyzer devices over the years.

When this bill comes up in committee, we hope the committee will take all the time it needs to call as many expert witnesses as possible to study it, just as other committees have done. The bill was never passed because of the conclusions they reached.

I will go over a bit of the history of this. In May 1999, Parliament studied driving under the influence of drugs. When the Standing Committee on Justice submitted its report on eliminating impaired driving, it emphasized that drugs play a part in some road accidents resulting in death and the incidence of driving under the influence of drugs is underestimated because the current legislation does not give the police any easy way to detect them. That was true in 1999 and it is still true today. We have a problem here, and we need to find a way of filling this gap in the legislation.

At the time, the committee emphasized the need to adopt better methods for detecting driving under the influence of drugs and getting the evidence needed to convict offenders. The same questions arose in 1999, therefore, as those the Bloc members are raising today. These questions are based on whether we have the ability to gather the evidence needed to get convictions. It is all very well to pass bills, but if the Constitution enables people who have committed crimes to evade punishment, the legislation does not do any good. It has to stand up in the courts.

Back in 1999, the committee pointed out a number of obstacles that existed. The Criminal Code requires police to have reasonable grounds for suspecting that a person is impaired before they can administer tests. The committee emphasized that Parliament should clearly define what reasonable grounds are and whether refusal to take tests constitutes a criminal act. We are obviously talking here about reasonable grounds and criminal acts. These are the points we want to bring forward. There were questions around them in 1999, and those questions still exist today.

There is apparently no single non-invasive test to detect drugs that impair a person’s ability to drive. We are left, therefore, with the well-known invasive tests, such as the breathalyzer for people who consume alcohol. This question was asked in 1999 and the conclusion was that there was no single non-invasive test. Blood tests were considered invasive under the Constitution.

We need to pay close attention to all this and have all the necessary experts appear. This will enable us to determine whether the technology has progressed since 1999 and evidence can be gathered that can stand up in court.

In the end, it will probably be necessary to obtain a blood sample. That was the conclusion in 1999. The committee approved the assessment made by a expert in drug detection, from the DRE program, but the committee added that the provinces had the last word in terms of training in this field.

It should be clearly understood that we can go ahead and adopt laws but it is the provinces that are responsible for enforcing them, in spite of all the discussion in this House or whatever legislation we may adopt. We hope, therefore, that the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights will call representatives of the various provinces, in order to ensure that legislation adopted in the Parliament of Canada is consistent with, among other things, legislation that may be adopted by the Quebec Department of Justice.

In addition, in 1999, the committee insisted on the need to take into account the consequences of drug testing in the context of the Charter. That was an issue at that time because the proposed tests could be more invasive and require more time than the tests used to detect alcohol. That was an issue in 1999 and it is still an issue today. Is it possible to have a non-invasive test that would be as effective and as quick as the breathalyzer for detecting alcohol?

Once again, we are talking about drug testing and we are conscious that accidents are caused by drivers. The evidence makes that clear. A survey by the Traffic Injury Research Foundation, conducted in 2002, concluded that 20% of Canadian drivers had driven a car within two hours of using a drug that could impair their faculties, either an over the counter medication, a prescription drug or an illegal drug. So, there are dangers because drivers are still taking to the road without being aware that their faculties have been impaired by drugs.

The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights deserves praise for discussing Bill C-32. However, we must be able to achieve a positive result so that those who are convicted face real penalties by virtue of the bill, without being able to avoid the legal consequences because the test was not admissible in court or because the test was judged to be unconstitutional.

In 1999, the committee said there was no reliable, non-invasive, fast method of detecting drugs on the roadside. Blood tests are one of the best ways of detecting cannabis. It is impossible to tell whether it has been used recently from a urine sample. Saliva might be a method, but there are not any fast, sufficiently reliable tests on the market.

So that is what the committee recommended in 1999. The representatives of the Bloc Québécois are telling the Quebeckers who listen to us that this is important; that there are people who drive while impaired by drugs and that this is unacceptable. But we have to be able to find these people if we want to charge them under the Criminal Code, and they have to justify their actions in court. A law may be passed but, if unconstitutional tests or tests that are inadmissible in court are no more than words and end up making it possible for some people to get away without being punished, it means that, as legislators we have not asked the right questions at the right time.

Furthermore, in 2003 a working group looked at this issue and published a document titled Drug-Impaired Driving: Consultation Document. This working group was created by the Department of Justice further to the recommendations made by the committee in 1999. The working group looked at solutions and asked how to come up with effective legislation that was admissible in court.

The working group described two main solutions. The first was to establish a legal limit for drugs in a person’s system. Still, it was admitted that a zero limit might not be advisable since some drivers could have cannabis in their system or have taken prescription drugs without being impaired. The committee thought that where drugs were concerned the allowed level would have to be determined.

The second solution was to legislate on the ability of police officers to demand drug detection tests. This working group spent more time looking at reasonable grounds for demanding more extensive tests than simply breathing into a device such as a breathalyzer. These grounds were mentioned by the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights in 1999. So when the topic of taking samples of blood, saliva and so on comes up, so does the old topic of reasonable grounds. When such samples are demanded, they must be constitutionally and legally defensible so that they are admissible in court.

Describing more or less the same system as the one proposed in Bill C-32, the working group suggested that a trained expert police officer be able to demand a physical sobriety test, or take a sample of saliva or sweat on the roadside if there are reasonable grounds for thinking that someone is driving while impaired.

So, the standing committee proposed that experts from each unit along with all police officers be assigned directly to these problems of consumption or lack of security so they could not be contradicted when they appeared before the courts.

That is one solution proposed by the working group. Such experts, certified police officers, could administer the tests themselves. They could require a sample of body fluids—blood, urine, saliva—to confirm that there were reasonable grounds to believe that the driver had committed an offence under section 253(a) by taking a drug. The counterpart to reasonable grounds is refusal. If the individual thinks there are not reasonable grounds and refuses to provide samples, they must prove that the police did not have reasonable grounds for believing that they were under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

This is why the working group proposed that the police become experts in this type of intervention. They have the skills required to appear before the court and say that they examined three, four or six persons during the operation and that they chose one for a particular reason. This officer can defend himself because he has the necessary skills. These were the recommendations made by the working group in 2003.

The concept of reasonable grounds reappears in Bill C-32. However, there is no mention of police experts. This concept comes under the provinces. The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights will have to call provincial authorities to appear in order to discover whether Quebec, for example, is in a position to implement the regulations and has the required personnel. The 2003 report by the federal Minister of Justice's committee will have to be studied to see if it is acceptable. Can the Quebec provincial police acquire the staff required? Who will pay for all of this? There are many questions. These are questions the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights can rightly raise with respect to Bill C-32.

For the benefit of Quebeckers watching, I point out that the Bloc agrees with the principle of this bill. Our question is whether, once the bill is passed, the Province of Quebec and the Quebec provincial police will be in a position to implement it. The people found guilty will thus be charged with the offences that have been put into law. In the event of doubt—do we have the necessary technology or are we incapable of defending ourselves before the courts—we will question the importance of implementing these regulations.

The 2003 Working Group also emphasized that because of Charter rights sensitivities, legislators would have to give serious consideration to current Criminal Code provisions permitting demands for evidential breath or DNA samples that have already survived legal challenges. That is what was said earlier. It is all well and good to say we want to make legislation effective, but there are examples of legal challenges when it comes to DNA tests. In major criminal cases there have been challenges with respect to DNA. We have to be able to have legislation because we understand that when we talk about drugs we do not mean alcohol. We are talking about drugs such as cannabis and other illegal drugs, but also legal drugs such as prescription medication.

We have to be able to make the distinction. Anyone convicted will have to suffer the consequences—fines and loss of driver's licence—after being found guilty of their actions. They will have to be sentenced according to law.

The situation around this legislation is quite complex. There have been major studies and statistics. In 2002, in Canada, the Traffic Injury Research Foundation conducted a survey. According to the survey, 20% of Canadian drivers had driven within two hours of taking a drug that may have affected their faculties.

We are talking about everyday medication, prescription medication or illicit drugs. This is a major problem. It was a problem in 2002 and I do not think much has changed in 2007.

People drive after using drugs for all sorts of reasons. Perhaps there is not enough publicity on the matter. Nonetheless, among other things, it is because it is still not considered a criminal offence. Our objective today is to recognize it as such.

A study by the Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec found that 30% of fatal accidents in Quebec involved the use of drugs or the combination of drugs and alcohol. It is important that legislation such as this be passed, but we have to ask all the questions—

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The hon. member for Brome—Missisquoi.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to congratulate my colleague from Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel for his excellent presentation. It was very balanced and to the point with regard to the fact that no one can be against virtue. He clearly showed that the Bloc is not against virtue; it agrees as long as there is the capability for properly testing individuals.

Will new tests routinely be found for new drugs? There are always new drugs.

I would also like to ask my colleague another question. Do individuals who breathe second-hand marijuana smoke have the same drug levels in their blood or breath as those who actually smoked the drug? It would be unfair for those sitting next to a driver smoking marijuana or those driving while someone is smoking in the car.

Would it not be better to reduce speed limits and monitor drivers' abilities? We are becoming increasingly lax in this regard. Every driver who has an accident should be tested because it is said that they are likely to have other accidents.

Would it not be better to also reduce speed limits at night? I am talking about reducing speed limits, but all we would really have to do is enforce current speed limits and not tolerate driving 20 or 30 km per hour over the limit. Would my colleague agree to that? Speed limits should be reduced at night or when it is raining. This is done elsewhere, why can we not do it here? We would not have to look for other means.

I would like to point out that accidents often occur because we tolerate speeding by individuals who have taken drugs or alcohol. Often they have not had good driver training.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to thank my colleague from Brome—Missisquoi for his question. I would note his experience: he is often on the road and he is able to see the harm that speed, among other things, can cause.

He is entirely correct. Highway traffic is getting heavier and heavier. We want more and more highways, and better and better highways, and we invest the money that is needed. In this increasingly heavy traffic, however, the posted speed limits should be observed. There is a lot of carelessness about this, and we should be enforcing the law today. Perhaps, for some places, we could revisit the posted speed limits, but we should at least observe the existing limit. People get confused, they no longer know what they are supposed to be doing, and we see people breaking the speed limit. Ultimately, we find that it is we who observe the limits who are slowing down traffic, because everybody is going faster. So the member is entirely correct, and the rules should be enforced much more rigorously.

In terms of drugs, the committee must be able to review the research. In both 1999 and 2003, no one was in a position to say that a new technology could have done accurate screening.

The member talked about second-hand smoke inhaled by people who are somewhere where others are using marijuana. The public also has to take some responsibility here. When someone is with other people who are using illicit drugs, that person is also guilty if he or she stays there and enjoys inhaling the smoke. Really, we cannot be taken in by this scenario. What we need is to have reliable tests.

Now, there are people who use prescription medications. We try to live as long as possible, and to drive our cars and be independent as long as possible too. For these reasons, we often take various kinds of medications. Sometimes, we do not know how those medications will react together, and so we do not know whether we can take them together. I think that progress is needed in the science.

In any event, I hope that the committee is going to call all the experts it needs so that we can have a test that is capable of identifying the substances. People must not be convicted when they are not criminals and have simply mixed their medications inadvertently.

So we have to be able to proceed with this. Otherwise, if the science has not reached that point, we will have to reconsider how to approach this bill.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to debate a bill in order to try and find arguments that will allow the legislation to be implemented.

People must be qualified and competent. We need screening devices such as the breathalyzers used to measure blood alcohol level some time after alcohol is consumed.

As the member for Brome—Missisquoi said about drugs, there could be a problem if passengers in the same vehicle have used drugs and inhaled the smoke. The driver could be affected by the passengers' drug use, even if he or she did not use drugs.

Take the example of someone hospitalized for surgery. The morphine prescribed for pain relief by the doctor could stay in the patient's blood after he or she is discharged. If the patient drives after leaving hospital, his or her blood could contain traces of morphine. Remember that this is a drug the doctor prescribed. What would happen in this case?

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Manicouagan for his question.

This person would be declared guilty under this bill. It is a simple as that. People leaving hospital must be able to check the level of medication in their system. For example, there are devices people can use when leaving a bar to check the approximate level of alcohol in their blood. There needs to be this type of technology and devices for medications. It would be irresponsible to declare sick people criminals. There has to be a way of detecting medications and preventing people from driving because the level is too high and it is impairing their faculties. People also have to be responsible citizens. They should not get behind the wheel when under the influence of either prescription or illegal drugs.

But there needs to be a way of proving that someone is drug-impaired or detecting that they are before they get behind the wheel. I hope that the technology will be adapted and that it can be put in place before solid citizens who had the misfortune to be ill at some point in their lives face criminal charges.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-32.

Drug users are frequently involved in fatal accidents, and that is a fact. Studies estimate that 3.4% of motor vehicle accident fatalities and 1.7% of injuries are the result of drug impairment. These estimated proportions more than double when dealing with impairment by a combination of alcohol and drugs. One study has indicated that more than 30% of fatal accidents in Quebec involved drugs, while another shows that 20% of fatal accidents in British Columbia involved drugs or a combination of alcohol and drugs.

A significant proportion of Canadians have also admitted to driving within a few hours of consuming drugs. Surveys have shown that 48% of Canadian drivers have taken the wheel within two hours of using cannabis, while close to 20% have taken the wheel within two hours of taking a potentially impairing drug, whether over the counter, prescription or illegal.

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health released a study that found that 20% of Ontario high school students admitted to driving a vehicle within one hour of using cannabis at least once within the preceding year. In 2002 the Nova Scotia Student Drug Use Survey also indicated about 26% of students, with a driver's licence, had driven within one hour of using cannabis over the previous year.

There is some evidence of a problem and Parliament has the responsibility to respond in an appropriate fashion when issues affect the health and well-being of the people of the country.

When I became a member of Parliament in 1993, the subject area related to drugs and alcohol played a fairly big role in my career as a parliamentarian. In fact, before I even sat one day in the House, after being elected, I did some work, knowing that the elected government had committed to a national forum on health to deal with health issues of Canadians, the number one priority issue for Canadians.

I had a great interest in being involved in that because I had spent about nine years on the board of the Mississauga Hospital, learning about our health care system, how it worked and how it affected people in the corridors of a hospital. I attained a great deal of respect for the doctors and nurses who serviced Canadians in their times of need and I wanted to be part of it.

Looking at some of the work that Parliament had done on the health files prior to my being elected, I stumbled across a report done by a subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Health and Welfare, Social Affairs, Seniors and the Status of Women entitled, “Foetal Alcohol Syndrome: A Preventable Tragedy”. I had no idea what fetal alcohol syndrome was, so I read the report. I discovered that the consumption of alcohol during pregnancy was the leading known cause of mental retardation in Canada. I saw statistics about the implications of the misuse of alcohol to impaired driving, which is an issue we are talking about today. I saw the health impacts on people, early morbidity, people dying much sooner than their expected lifespan.

It was clear to me that I wanted to know more about this. I wondered how someone who was educated, who had three children and who engaged in the community on a hospital board would not know about fetal alcohol syndrome. I wanted to get involved because I felt that if I did not know, then there probably were a lot of other Canadians who also did not know.

The issue of alcohol has been a very big item in my career and I have raised it many times. Yesterday, in reference to a report that I had encouraged from the Standing Committee on Health, the Minister of Health issued a response to it. It states that we spend a lot of time going in circles on the subject matter of alcohol and its implications not only to unborn children when consumed during pregnancy, but also the impairment issue when we operate machinery or drive automobiles.

That report has been issued by the government. I have not reviewed it as thoroughly as I would like, but it is about time that Canada took a lead role in mitigating the impact of alcohol, the poison ethanol, which is in beverage alcohol and many affects that it has on Canadians.

There is another area in which I have some relevant experience. In the first session of the 35th Parliament, as a member of the health committee I was asked to chair a subcommittee on Bill C-7, the controlled drugs and substances act, the act which Bill C-32 is proposing to amend. At that time, about a decade ago, there was a great deal of discussion about marijuana and its implications. Grow houses were not the rampant problem that they are today. Something has happened and I know what it is.

The potency of this drug, cannabis sativa, and there are two other types in its natural form, the THC content, tetrahydrocannabinol content, can be changed in the plant so that it has a higher potency. B.C. bud is one of the most sought after marijuanas because it has the highest THC content. It gives the highest buzz. It has the highest ability to impair one's ability.

Some of the questions that have been asked around here about what kind of technology there is to deal with this are really important ones. If we detect drugs in a person's system and charge the person for being impaired, how do we know that the drug is affecting the person's ability to do what the person is supposed to do? It is a very complicated issue.

When I chaired the subcommittee dealing with Bill C-7 I can recall the government's position was that there was no intention of decriminalizing marijuana. That debate continues. Even in the last couple of years that issue continues to be floated around by people.

We have to understand that the potency of any drug can be altered by those who produce or manufacture it. We have to keep ahead of that, particularly when dealing with things like designer drugs. Designer drugs are not legal drugs and they cannot be purchased over the counter, but boy can they be cranked out. We have seen the implications on our young people. It causes a big problem. This is something I feel very strongly about.

In the Bill C-7 subcommittee we also talked about harm reduction strategy. Poor people who use drugs get the drugs off the street and sometimes they get a bad batch. The thinking back then was that the government should get involved in regulating the production and distribution of safe drugs so fewer drug users would be hurt by a bad batch of drugs. The thinking back then was that we had to protect people who were breaking the law rather than find a balance. I found that a difficult bill to deal with and the changes that were proposed at the time.

It is interesting to note that this has come full circle. We are now back to the implications of drug impairment on driving. I will tell the House why this is important.

I started off my speech by reading some statistics into the record and it looks like there is a problem. Whatever has been measured and reported in some of the studies about the problems of drinking and driving or consuming drugs and driving is a lot smaller than the facts. The reason is that the police and people in the hospitals who are charged with determining the cause of death and cause of injury normally report that trauma is the cause of death of someone who has been killed by a drunk driver, who has been squished against a wall somewhere. In fact, the cause of death of that human being was an idiot drunk driver who lost control of his vehicle and killed somebody. Those are some of the issues. The reporting mechanisms that have been relied upon to provide legislators with the information they need to make good laws and wise decisions are impaired.

The police often do not take breathalyzer tests of people who were in accidents. They spend more of their time cleaning up the site to get the traffic going again and to make sure that the injured parties get into an ambulance and get taken away. It is not the job of the hospital officials. There is no coordination.

I am very concerned about the issue of impaired driving and the use of machinery and equipment when one is impaired, whether it be by alcohol or any other substance, illegal or legally prescribed, I do not care. The fact is there are substances that people can and do take that impair their ability and impact the health and well-being of ordinary Canadians.

Bill C-32 amends the Criminal Code. What is the current law? Currently section 253(a) of the Criminal Code makes it an offence to drive while one's ability to operate a vehicle is impaired by alcohol or a drug or a combination of alcohol and a drug.

While section 253(b) contains the further offence of driving while one's blood alcohol level is over the limit, no similar drug limit offence exists. This is a problem. We just do not know yet, and if one can play around with marijuana, its potency and so on, one is not sure. Consuming two joints with a low THC level could be nothing compared to consuming one joint with B.C. bud in it or something like that.

This is going to be more complicated than I think people have indicated. I want the bill to go to committee. I want the expert witnesses who come to committee to make absolutely sure that we are on the right track and that we are not making this a little more complicated and not charter proof. The charter proof issue is really important.

Although drug impaired driving is a criminal offence, police have few legally designated means of controlling that offence. They currently rely on non-quantifiable symptoms of drug impairment, such as erratic driving behaviour or the testimony of some witnesses. Drug tests are admissible as evidence in court, but only if the driver participates voluntarily. Some changes will be necessary to the current law in order to make this bill effective. I think the intent is very good. I am not yet convinced whether or not we have the means, the tools and the cooperation. It is going to take a great deal of work to make this work.

Yes, it is a challenge and it is a challenge that Parliament should take up. I am very much looking forward to the justice committee dealing with this but I also I have a problem there. I know that the justice committee is swamped with at least 8 or 10 bills. It is dealing with a whole series of bills, many of which could have been included in one omnibus bill to amend the Criminal Code for a number of offences. We could have had the same witnesses that we are having bill after bill after bill. We could have had all of them there to deal with the same items. Some of the bills are no brainers. They have the support of virtually everyone in the House. They should be passed but they have to go through the process.

We should be expediting these things. I do not know why the then justice minister had to come in with a series of bills other than for political or partisan reasons to say look at all the things the government is doing.

When we are tinkering around with the Criminal Code, let us not take up the House's time. Let us not take up the justice committee's time. Let it do its job. Let us be efficient in proposing and addressing legislation. It is more a matter of let us work smart rather than work hard. I do not think we have been working smart.

This bill is going to take some work. I do not know whether or not we are going to get the time at the justice committee with all the other obligations it has and I do not know what else is coming. For very important bills we are going to have to start dealing with legislative committees, committees that are able to work smartly on legislation and address some of the key problems, particularly as they might touch on charter issues, jurisdictional responsibilities, court challenges, the application of penalties, or whatever it might be. It is an important bill that really has to get done.

I want to quickly refer to a study which I thought was really good. The Senate did a study about a Canadian public policy on cannabis.

This issue is one which most members who have spoken to this bill and talked about driving while impaired, have talked about using marijuana and whether or not it has some impairment ability. Yes, we do know it can impair one's ability, as any drug can.

The Senate often does things that the House of Commons committees do not do when they do studies. The Senate does a lot more ad hoc studies, not in response to legislation, but rather on important issues of the day to provide a comprehensive review and summary of the state of the facts on matters which are going to affect us down the road.

This should be very helpful to the committee. I want to read into the record what the senators articulated as a public policy regime that they proposed for expressing the fundamental premise underlying their report. This is good. It is like having a mission statement to give us a road map as to where we are going with this, what is our thinking based on. It states:

In a free and democratic society, which recognizes fundamentally but not exclusively the rule of law as the source of normative rules and in which government must promote autonomy as far as possible and therefore make only sparing use of the instruments of constraint, public policy on psychoactive substances must be structured around guiding principles respecting the life, health, security and rights and freedoms that the individuals, who, naturally and legitimately, seek their own well-being and development and can recognize the presence, difference and equality of others.

It takes a little time; it has to be read two or three times, but it basically says balance. We have objectives and we have individual rights and freedoms. We have to be careful. The balance has to be right. We cannot be draconian in measures just because we know we can slap something down. It is important to understand that sometimes it is necessary to provide, whether it be the policing authorities or the courts, the tools to deal with certain issues where clearly we have not been able to get the job done.

I referred to the term tetrahydrocannabinol which is the most active component of cannabis. It is what gives the so-called buzz. I have never tried the stuff myself, never will, but I am told it is. There is a lovely glossary in the report. It says that THC is highly fat soluble, has a lengthy half life, its psychoactive effects are modulated by other active components in cannabis. In its natural state cannabis contains between .5% to 5% THC. Sophisticated cultivation methods and plant selection, especially female plants, lead to higher THC levels of concentration.

There is no question about it. As a matter of fact, when I was in university way back when, and it was probably around 1970 when I got out of there, one could smoke a field of marijuana and not get a buzz because it was so weak. It is about ten times stronger because in its natural state it is only .5% THC content.

[Merv Tweed, Conservative, Brandon—Souris, MB]

The voice of experience.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Marijuana today--

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order. There is only a short period of time left in the hon. member's remarks. I am going to ask all hon. members to hold off their comments until we get to questions and comments and I am sure the hon. member for Mississauga South will be happy to answer any concerns members have.

The hon. member for Mississauga South.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think I put that properly. I evoked a reaction from hon. colleagues, but I was told when we were in the hearings on Bill C-7 on controlled drugs and substances, some five or six years ago, that the strength of drugs was about ten times stronger than they were when I was in university. Today we are the people making the legislation and some members say that marijuana is not a big deal. It depends from whence one came because there are some other things to take into account.

My time is up. I recommend that the committee refer to the Senate committee report. I also want to point out that I and others have some concern about the problems that we may have in dealing with this bill in the courts. One of the critical problems with introducing measures to combat drug impaired driving is that there is no scientific consensus. That is the point. There is no scientific consensus. If that is the case, we have a big job to do. Let us get on with it.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being here for this afternoon's debate. There is certainly great public interest in this issue.

I wonder, though, in the member's enthusiasm for the issues he raises, whether he has had any conversations at all with police officers, with those folks who need to be enforcing this legislation if and when it passes in the House.

In my community of Hamilton, police officers are under-resourced. They are already feeling the strains of their jobs. Training will be a hugely important aspect of what we as legislators are asking the police officers in our communities to take on.

I wonder if the member can comment a little about consultations that have taken place and whether we can go back to our communities and be absolutely certain that the training and the resources will be in place before we add yet another burden onto the police officers in our community.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

In fact, Mr. Speaker, Bill C-32 is proposing more tools for the police. I should say that Mothers Against Drunk Driving are in favour of this legislation, as we know, as is the president of the Canadian Professional Police Association.

However, the member asked specifically about the police officers themselves. That is extremely important. What we often find is the problem that we come up with amendments to the Criminal Code which require all kinds of different resources to be applied, but we do not follow up with providing those resources. We either do not have the court time to deal with these additional cases or we in fact do not have the manpower to be able to do it.

The federal government creates these laws and then the provincial governments have to apply and enforce them. If the provinces and territories are not given the resources, what happens is that good laws just do not work. The member is quite right.

However, more tools are provided in the bill. The police will be able to demand that a person suspected of driving while impaired by alcohol or drug participate in a sobriety test at the roadside. That is different. That is going to actually improve the job, because police will not have to go through the legal mumbo-jumbo of getting a court order for that. Also, the police will be able to demand that a person suspected of driving while impaired by a drug participate in a physical test and a bodily fluid sample test. Those things are going to happen.

Police are also not going to be hung up in court as long, simply because there is going to be some sharp limiting of the witness evidence that is available under the current law. It is going to be curbed under the proposed law.

However, the member is correct. This raises an important issue that the committee has to look at. If we expect the provinces to enforce these laws and to have people properly trained, they must have the resources to do it. It is our responsibility to make sure that the finance minister over there is going to be cognizant of the demands that we are making with regard to the policing authorities all across the country, many of which are outside the federal jurisdiction.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Obviously, Mr. Speaker, impaired driving is a scourge in our country on the streets of all our communities.

I wonder if the member could comment more fully, however, on the coincidence of the decisions made in September by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice to table Bill C-32 on the same day that they announced cuts to the pilot program for testing or providing training for the detection of drug impaired drivers, to the sum of some $4.2 million. Only after some political pressure did they announce that eventually the government might offer a program worth $2 million for some training that has yet to be announced.

How crucial to the success of this bill is the training to detect drug impairment?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is quite right. The facts he has given are my understanding of the facts.

The bill specifically relies very heavily on expert assessment and analysis by the policing authorities. That means they are going to have to be trained. It means there are going to have to be additional resources for them to be able to discharge those responsibilities.

All I can say is that it is puzzling that the government would dismantle something at the level of some $4 million only to bring it back in part, unless the government is suggesting that somehow it needs the money for other purposes, but either we are committed to the bill or we are not. I much suspect that the government has followed a pattern: wherever it does not suit its current purpose, good programs will be sacrificed without considering the consequences. I think the government has made a bad decision.

However, we cannot worry about what the government has done in the past. What we have to worry about is making sure that we as legislators around here, those who care to do it, make good laws and wise decisions.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague almost argued in support of the bill. He mentioned that, at one time, drugs were less potent than they are today. I hope that that is not true. Drugs are drugs.

I would like to ask him a very different question. He wondered whether this bill could stand up to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In 1982, the Liberal Party introduced a charter that the Province of Quebec did not sign. We did not sign the charter. The Criminal Code is one of the rights governed by the federal government, but we did not sign the charter. In addition, the other rights and freedoms of the charter have not been or could not be implemented since 1982.

When my colleague talks of being charter proof, is he referring to the fact that the Criminal Code no longer applied to the Province of Quebec because we did not sign the charter, which gives the federal government this authority?

I would like to hear my colleague, an academic, answer this question.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we could spend too much time on this. I would just suggest to the member that he do everything in his power to see that Quebec reconsiders and signs the charter.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to compliment my colleague on his eloquent speeches on this topic, on the topic yesterday and on every topic that comes before the House.

I have a question on the technology. When the Liberals brought this bill forward, the most problematic part was the state of the technology for assessing drugs at the site. I wonder if he could update us on whether that technology has improved to make this bill more realistic. There was a problem in the detection.

We all want to detect and stop drivers impaired by drugs, but there was a technology problem at the time. I wonder if he has any update on the state of the technology.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very good question, because the technology is there to detect what is in the system. The issue is whether the person was impaired, and it depends. In fact, I think the example has been given that marijuana can be detected in the blood system for four weeks, but the impairment may only last for hours, so it is not just a matter of whether or not it is there.

As for the evidence that the technology is available, we can just simply to look at what has been done in terms of the drug testing that now is done for the Olympics and for professional athletes, et cetera. The detection is there now, but there has to be the linkage to impairment. That is why we need the training for the DREs: for them to be able to detect the signs and to get the proper information and observations down so that their expert testimony and the results of drug testing will in concert indicate that likelihood, along with other evidence they may have.

I am not at this point sure, but this is one of the reasons why we have a committee to look at a bill after we get a chance here, before we have heard any of the current testimony of witnesses and experts in the fields and disciplines that are relevant to this bill. It is important that this bill get to committee. It is important to hear questions such as the one the member just posed, extremely important, in order to make absolutely sure that we understand the tools being proposed under this bill in fact are going to be effective and are indeed going to be properly funded all across the country.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, if no one else wants to speak to the bill, there are some items I want to bring forth.

First, like everyone in the House, I want to do everything possible to stop impaired drivers, whether or not they are impaired by drugs, which is the emphasis of this particular bill. Of course, our party and the others, I am sure, have had this as an ultimate goal. Our party brought forward Bill C-16 in the previous Parliament to try to deal with this issue.

Following up on my last comment, the problem we were having at the time was with the detection of various drugs in the system and the discernment of the impairment due to them, and how it could be proved to the extent that we would be successful in prosecutions.

We should not let that stop us. For those reasons, we have to keep working on that technology and training. We have to keep working on the ability to convict people and to determine with regard to the various drugs what impairment is, how it can be measured, and how it can be prosecuted to make sure that needless accidents do not occur, injuring families, children and other innocent people.

I want to comment on what the previous member said. I will take a step out from this bill for a minute to comment on his remark about the lineup of justice bills in committee. I commend the justice committee members for such a heavy agenda, but I disagree with the hon. member that those bills should have been put into an omnibus bill, thus putting them all together to make it faster, because there were a number of very controversial bills, to be nice about it, bills that went against the basic mainstream of modern thought in the judicial system, a number of which we believe would increase crime in Canada, would be soft on crime and would put more trained criminals on the street. If we were to put a number of controversial bills together and people were to vote against one of them, it would kill the whole bill. In that respect, the government would not have had anything get through.

However, we are dealing with bills of such a serious nature, bills about incarcerating a larger number of Canadians and using a large number of resources for that, resources that could be used for police or prevention, bills about reducing judges' discretion and pay rate, and bills about taking away the conditional sentences that are so effective for aboriginal people and others in stopping recidivism when the old system of simple incarceration and putting people in prison to train to be better criminals is not working.

When we have a number of serious bills like these, I would not like to see them all put into one bill. I do not think people realize the magnitude of the threats to a good judicial system that were before us in Parliament. I think the government did the right thing by bringing each bill forward individually so they could be debated individually, even though it means more work for us in the justice committee in making sure that these serious proposals are dealt with seriously and at length and with a number of expert witnesses to help us in that direction.

Going back to BillC-32, although we are strongly supportive, we certainly want a serious investigation in committee, along with the long lineup of bills we do have in that committee. For one thing, we want to look at the practical tools available for the analysis of different drugs in the system. We want to look at the analysis and the effect on impairment, at the way to measure this and the way this would stand up in court in a prosecution.

A previous question by one of our colleagues brought up a good concern related to resources. That is a concern not only for this bill but for several other bills before the House at this time.

We should also ask at committee whether the attorneys general are willing to prosecute the bill and whether they have the resources. Do they think this has a high enough priority to divert resources for the training and the enforcement? This certainly will add a significant burden to a task for which they only have limited resources. That certainly has to be investigated in committee.

We want to ask those people, including the police forces and the attorneys general, what their feelings are about whether they want a bill, whether they can enforce it, whether they have the resources to do so and what can be done about it.

It would also be important to talk to the police officers who have had experience in the roadside checks and ask them about the problems they may have had on the more simple cases that we have at the moment with the tools that are now available, the ones that have been tested and proven. We should ask them how they think this system would work when it is outlined.

Another section in the bill relates to increasing the penalties for alcohol crimes and making stiffer sentences for the various levels of alcohol crimes. I certainly think we should have a discussion on that in committee.

I would say that the majority in parliamentarians are primarily against increasing minimums or even imposing minimums for many crimes because the experts have told us, quite clearly in committee, that it is not effective and that it does not work.

Maximums can be added to crimes to give a judge more discretion, a judge who understands the situation, who wants to penalize unrepentant repeat offenders and who wants to take seriously some of these crimes. I think those should be discussed in committee so we can have the type of debate we have already been having in committee about various sentences and also comparing them with other crimes and the types of sentences that are available for other crimes, the types of options, and to ensure that driving while under the influence of alcohol or under anything else that would be seen as driving impaired and threatening innocent citizens, is seen as a serious offence.

Another section in the bill, which should be discussed in committee, and I think I asked this previously of the parliamentary secretary, is the section relating to the taking of fluids and body sample tests. This would be needed to analyze the blood level for various drugs required in this bill.

Every time we come to a provision such as this in various bills, such as in the good Samaritan act, discussions take place about the volatility of the body and the privacy of a person. We need to ensure that this law is written very carefully so that people are protected but, on the other hand, that the general citizenry are protected from a person who would drive impaired and is a threat to us all.

Another section of the bill that I would like to ask questions on in committee relates to restricting the use of evidence to the contrary.

A jury or a judge can throw out any evidence if they think it is fallacious, not useful or just a decoy to detract from the real issues in the case but, nevertheless, I find it hard to understand how, in our present justice system, any evidence can be restricted. Evidence is evidence. People should be able to bring forward evidence and the judge and jury should decide on the evidence that has come forward. They can dismiss poor evidence but I do not think we can say that evidence cannot be brought before the court and then convince people that we have a fair justice system.

The bill contains many good items but a lot of areas still need to be looked at. As I said, we were looking at this and we also proposed a bill because people were being taken out of their vehicles and being charged for being under the influence of alcohol when they could have easily been under the influence of drugs and have caused the same carnage to innocent people. We have no mechanism in place to catch those people, to analyze the situation and to prosecute them successfully.

If we can refer this to committee, hopefully we can ensure that the bill will be effective in achieving the goal that I am sure everyone in the House wants, which is to make our streets safer by getting people, who would wilfully put themselves in the situation of harming both themselves and others, off the roads. They need to understand that we take this seriously and that we will put the resources into both the technology, training and the drafting of a law that will be effective in reducing this type of unnecessary carnage and accidents affecting innocent people on our highways.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for supporting the bill and sending it to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. I commend him and all the members of this House for taking to heart the problems related to alcohol.

In Quebec, my province, we have a serious problem with impaired driving. Many of those who die have alcohol levels higher than the 0.0 presently tolerated. Many people lose children or their wife and there is carnage—you used the term carnage—or, at least, very serious accidents.

As the member for Yukon, can my colleague tell me if, in his province, there is legislation that provides compensation irrespective of liability? In Quebec, we have such a law and there is no civil liability. Even if we kill someone with a vehicle while impaired, which is criminal, we are absolved of any civil liability. The only punishment for a Quebec driver is dispensed by the Criminal Code, because there is legislation that does not attribute civil liability.

My colleague for Yukon and I are members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. I appreciate his contribution. Can he tell us if there is the same problem in the Yukon? If an impaired driver kills someone, is he civilly liable under Yukon law?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, in relation to the Yukon highway traffic act, although I am not familiar with the specific details that the member might be asking about, but in the Yukon situation I would like to say that our society is so harmonious that we have no misuse of substances but that is not entirely true.

We definitely have, unfortunately, our own levels of poverty and social problems that often lead to substance abuse. We also have, what I am sure they have in many parts of Canada, the enforcement of the existing laws. We have stop checks and people are charged under the Criminal Code. We also have good warning systems in our society. We have warnings related to alcohol. We have warnings on our liquor bottles relating to the harm to fetuses, which I would hope they would have across the country.

I commend the police and public organizations, such as MADD, for holding good public information sessions on the harm of drinking and driving. The best way to reduce something is not through crime and punishment in the first place, but through education and convincing people of its effects. If they understand its effects then they will definitely not reoffend.

I do not think we have the types of laws that the member is talking about but we certainly seriously enforce the Criminal Code and enforce against the criminal use of substances in our area because it can be just as dangerous as everywhere else, especially with slippery, icy roads and lengthy highways where people need to drive long distances, sometimes on gravel roads where it is easier to lose control of a vehicle.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, when I look at the bill, I think of what happened in the past with the regulations that were set for the consumption of alcohol and driving. We went through a fairly rigorous process of determining over the years scientifically that it was .08, but we have seen movement now to a higher level of intolerance with alcohol content in the body. My riding has gone to .05. This has not been done through a process but through pressure rather than a scientific understanding of the nature of impairment.

With this particular bill, where we are dealing with a multitude of substances taken singularly and in combination, how do ensure that we are charging people who are actually impaired, in other words, providing incontrovertible evidence or even a standard of application that can give some surety to the courts and to our citizens who are human beings like all of us and may partake in one or other of the substances that are part of the common culture in Canada?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, that is basically why the member for Mississauga South and I were saying that this bill needs to go to committee. That is a very good question that the committee needs to answer. It will need to look at the technology, at the training and at the types of tests because it is very complicated when there is a mixture of drugs and alcohol.

How can one provide incontrovertible proof, at least enough for a prosecution? We do not want arbitrary detention of people by the police or prosecution in an arbitrary manner. We want scientific proof. The committee will need to be convinced that this is available and if it is not available I would encourage the government to invest more funds to ensure it becomes available.

The member also raised an interesting point about the levels of drugs. In Germany it is .05 and in Sweden it is .02. In case I do not get a chance to comment on this, we have a bill before the justice committee that would provide a summary conviction from .05 up to .08 and the existing law would continue.

The one concern I have about that is that we ensure it will be the type of conviction that does not get recorded in our criminal system in the way that criminal records are kept for the lesser offences because there are problems when people cross borders, for instance, into the United States.

In Canada people can get pardons for those types of offences eventually. Once people have shown regret, paid the penalty and proven it was a mistake they can obtain a pardon but, unfortunately, that pardon does not carry over into the United States. We now have people who may have had a small problem due to youthful exuberance and then it is over with but they are forever listed in other countries and cannot get across borders.

That is a point I will be bringing forward when it comes time for debate on that bill, a consideration of the way that particular bill has been written on lowering the blood levels from .08 to .05.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly, the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to a committee)