For the drug evaluation, although the Supreme Court of Canada gave us the authority to stop vehicles, to check driver fitness and vehicle fitness, generally speaking the vehicles are stopped for some reason. If we suspect that it may be a matter of driver fitness, then they'd do the sobriety test. If the person passes the sobriety test, we don't continue the investigation; the driver is free to go.
Whatever we do, we still have to be accountable to the court and be able to justify why we're advancing from stage to stage. When we get them back to the office for the drug evaluation, if they pass the sobriety test, or the divided attention test, there's no point in going through the clinical indicators because we don't have impairment. Without the impairment, we don't have a charge, because the charge is specifically for driving or operating a motor vehicle while impaired.
So whether they have consumed alcohol or drugs.... And I've actually had cases where we've stopped people and we've seen them smoking marijuana, and they don't do the roadside tests very well, and there were reasons for that; they may have had problems. In the case of this driver in particular, he was scared—and rightfully so. We went back to the office and put him through tests. There was some indication that there might be some impairment—bearing in mind that marijuana is more mentally impairing than physically impairing. At the conclusion of the clinical indicators, I was the evaluator and said flat out, this person is not impaired. Yes, they consumed marijuana, but that's no different from their having had a beer. As a result, the person was let go without any charges.