Justice Committee on May 30th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Madam Jennings.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much for your presentation, Minister.

I have just a couple of questions. One concerns--and I don't know what the term is in English--l'expert en reconnaissance des drogues. I'd like to know how many police officers across Canada have already been certified as such experts and how many more will be required in order to ensure that Bill C-32, when it becomes the law, will actually be implemented, and there is no excuse.

Given that le test de sobriété normalisés for drug impairment is already being used in Canada in several jurisdictions, has it been contested before the courts for its constitutionality; and if it has, what has been the result of that?

I'd also like to know the success rate of the test and the rate of conviction as compared to alcohol, if you have those statistics. If those statistics are not available, then that is a request we would make to the centre in future, to try to get that breakdown.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Jennings.

There are currently 2,428 officers trained in standard field sobriety testing in Canada. As well, there are 250 drug recognition experts in Canada. We would expect that we would need to add to that level with the introduction of this bill. With current national funding, 144 police officers will be trained as drug recognition experts this year, and 216 trained in standard field sobriety tests. There are courses outside the national program; that's not the only way, of course, that you could get trained. There could be as many as perhaps another 96 in standard field sobriety tests.

With respect to the comments about the success in prosecutions, Mr. Yost, would you like to comment on that, please?

[Greg Yost]

I'm thinking of anecdotal evidence only. Evan, I believe, keeps track of the reports from the DRE-trained officers.

Before I pass it over to him, you asked about standard field sobriety testing being tested in the courts. Some of the provinces, certainly Manitoba, have regulations under their highway traffic acts requiring people to do that. My understanding is that challenges to that have been unsuccessful, but that's a challenge to provincial administrative law. This is the Criminal Code. We'll have our own challenges, no question.

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

To your knowledge, there have not been any constitutional challenges under the Criminal Code. People can be charged with impaired driving where it's not alcohol; it's drugs. That means there has been some form of sobriety testing, and I would have assumed, then, that there would have been some kind of challenge. Defence lawyers are quite enterprising.

[Greg Yost]

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

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

There you go. Okay, thank you.

That was it. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Madam Jennings.

Corporal Graham, did you want to make reference to anything that was just said?

[Cpl Evan Graham]

You asked about the overall numbers that would be required. When we look at the drug recognition expert, we basically compare them to the evidentiary breath technician, the person who operates the breath-testing instrument. There are currently 2,600 breath techs in Canada. We're sitting with about 250 trained for drug impairment, and if we look at them as being on an equal footing, we'd be looking, overall, in the long term, to make the same number of people trained as DREs, so somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2,600 to 3,000.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Corporal.

Madam Freeman.

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

I would like to ask for a bit of information. Ms. Jennings was referring to DREs, drug recognition experts. I have contacted a number of police forces since yesterday to try to understand this, because I was told that this service was being used in Quebec.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Madame Freeman, would you speak into the microphone?

Thank you.

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

Nobody seemed to be aware of it. I would like to understand what exactly these DREs do. My colleague asked you a question earlier on and you did not answer. In real life, I know that when police officers arrest individuals, they can ask them to take a sobriety test and afterwards the drug recognition expert would get involved. How does this work from a practical standpoint?

[Cpl Evan Graham]

A drug recognition expert has specific training in the indicia of drugs as well as psychophysical tests and clinical indicators. Roadside, the person has been stopped for some reason. They are put through divided attention tests, the standardized field sobriety test battery. That will show if the person is impaired by something. If it's suspected to be alcohol, they get a breath demand, and then go back for a breath test. If it's suspected to be drugs or something other than alcohol, we ask that they go back and participate in a drug evaluation.

The first part of the drug evaluation is to obtain a breath sample to rule out alcohol as the primary cause of impairment. If the level is over the legal limit, then they are charged with driving while over 80 milligrams percent. If alcohol is ruled out, they then go through the same sobriety test they did at roadside, plus two others, in a controlled environment where there are no distractions from oncoming traffic, no distractions from bystanders, where the surface is level, and where there are no weather conditions to be concerned about either.

At the conclusion of that, we can prove that the person is either impaired or not. We still don't know what is causing the impairment. That's where we use the clinical indicators. We'll take the person's pulse on three separate occasions. We'll take their blood pressure and their body temperature, check their muscle tone, and look at their pupils in three lighting conditions—regular room light, near total darkness, and direct light. In doing this, we want to see what size the pupils are and how they react to the light. We will also check to ensure that the person doesn't have any medical problems.

At the conclusion of the clinical portion, we can put the person in one or more of seven drug categories--we're not looking for a specific drug, just the broad category—or rule that out if the problem is medical or fatigue. At this point, we're going to interview the driver, tell them what we suspect they're using, and at the conclusion of the interview ask them for a bodily fluid sample to be sent to a lab for analysis to confirm or refute what the evaluator has called.

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

Thank you.

The minister indicated that a number of drug recognition experts were to be hired. Given the size of the country, how do you think you will be able to service remote regions?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

The enforcement of these, Madame Freeman, is done by municipal, regional, and provincial police forces. As to how they're allocated, they are in charge right now, of course, of impaired driving even in rural areas or remote areas, so this will certainly be a supplement to that.

Regarding the initial part of your question, I indicated that there would be more hiring given the funding that's available now, and that will increase the number of individuals. But again, the implementation of these things at the roadside level is done by provincially regulated forces that will be at either the municipal or, in the case of the province of Quebec or Ontario, the provincial police force level.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Madame Freeman, go ahead, please, very quickly.

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

I spoke to the police services today. According to the documents DRE services are available in several provinces, including Quebec. I didn't call the Magdalen Islands or the Gaspé region, but I did call forces in the Quebec City and Montreal regions and the various police forces I called have never even heard of it. They did not even know what I was talking about. That is why I am asking you the question. It may seem obvious, here in a committee setting, but it is less so throughout the land.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

We certainly want to get the message out. As I say, there is funding for people in both levels of expertise. I'm quite sure that all police forces, now that this has become a not voluntary measure—the police officers can require this—will want to get on board.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

Thank you, Madame Freeman.

Mr. Moore.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to be cognizant of the time. I think the minister has said he would be here for an hour.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

It's approaching one hour now. You'll be the last questioner.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Great. We don't want to go into overtime.

Minister, thank you for being here. I know this is an extremely important bill, and it addresses concerns that probably all of our constituents have. We know that in the Criminal Code or the annotated Criminal Code, the sections on impaired driving grow year by year by year, and now it's a field of study all its own.

Can you speak a bit about this two-beer defence? It might be the first time that Canadians are hearing about it. I think it's widely recognized that it's time for it to go. Could you speak a bit about what is meant when we talk about the two-beer defence, and why, if it ever was appropriate, it's no longer appropriate?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

That's a very good question, Mr. Moore.

There are a hundred ways any defence can be raised, but you could have a situation where an individual is picked up and fails the breathalyzer test. You'd think it would pretty well be conclusive, in the absence of there being a problem with the breathalyzer test. Yet what you might have at a trial is an individual coming in and saying, “The breathalyzer test must be wrong; I've only had one beer or two beers over the course of a couple of hours.” You could even have several witnesses who happened to have been sitting around the table say, “Yes, I remember Charlie; he only had two beers all night.” Certainly that would call into question the reading.

But what we know is this: while it might have been easier 25 or 30 years to challenge the accuracy of the breathalyzer equipment—that's right, Madam Jennings is confirming—today the equipment works, and works very well. So what we want to do is restrict the ability of the individual to challenge it. If they do challenge it; if they say there's something wrong, then they'll have to show that there is actually a problem with the breathalyzer test. They won't be able to raise that doubt by having any number of witnesses come forward to indicate that the individual didn't drink or drank very little. That's the problem with it.

I know my time is up—I'm going to be meeting some people at a quarter to five—but I never like to leave without hearing from Mr. Lee, Mr. Chairman, so I'll accommodate him if you'll accommodate him.

[The Chair, Conservative, Art Hanger]

I was going to ask whether, in the spirit of cooperation, you would keep him happy. You certainly beat me to the punch.

Mr. Lee.