Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We've had excellent submissions this morning, in my view.
I should state at the opening that even though I may pick at some parts of this bill, I realize there's massive support for new legislation and a policy that would reduce the incidence of impaired driving in Canadian society. I'm concerned, though, that components of this statute may, intentionally or unintentionally, go too far within our current legal system.
I want to direct a question to Mr. Solomon. It's a double-barrelled question.
Firstly, subclause 8(6) of the bill essentially removes a defence, or tries to remove a defence, as you've described. But I'm going to read a quote from a particular case, the Seaboyer case:
A law which prevents the trier of fact from getting at the truth by excluding relevant evidence in the absence of a clear ground of policy or law justifying the exclusion runs afoul of our fundamental conceptions of justice and what constitutes a fair trial.
I'm suggesting that subclause 8(6) falls into that category. It's going to obstruct the trier of fact from getting all the truth. I'd like your response to that.
Secondly, this bill will, in practice, implicate an individual—and I'll refer to schedule 4 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. A weightlifter who's taking steroids, who happens to have the steroids in his or her body, gets stopped by a police officer for a broken tail light and admits that he or she is a weightlifter and has been taking steroids. That weightlifter would fall within the ambit of this new statute now, and the police officer would be allowed to stop, detain, and apply a test even in the absence of any evidence of impairment. It has nothing to do with drunk driving or drugged driving. The statute, in my view, may just go too darn far.
Could I ask you to comment on both of those, please?