Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee, and others.
At the Canada Safety Council, of course, we have seen that prevention works over the years. Perhaps our greatest gain is indeed by prevention, because if we look at the general public, today they have more or less disappeared from the statistics. The average social drinker understands the penalities and behaves accordingly. Our greatest challenge has really been in dealing with those folks who are alcohol-dependent, people who are perhaps alcoholics or who drink to excess on a regular basis. How do we reach these people? Many of them are more afraid of being apprehended than of the actual punishment. After all, if we look at impaired-driver fatalities, in close to half of them, it's them--it's the drivers themselves who receive the greatest punishment, which is death. That doesn't deter them.