I would simply like to read out a section of an e-mail, which was sent by Mr. Richard Prihoda on June 19, 2007, at 9:28 a.m. to Hanger, Art, MP, with c.c.'s to Justice and Human Rights, and it lists the members of this committee, including me. It says:
M. Hanger: I am addressing you the present note as president of the committee on the hearings on the amendments to the Criminal Code...regarding impaired driving infractions. I am a practicing attorney in the Montréal area for close to twenty years and am a member of the Association des Avocats de Défense de Montréal (AADM) and was told that....
I will skip a couple of paragraphs. It says:
Our Supreme Court has many years ago ruled on the presumptions which presently appear in our Criminal Code. They decided that they are a violation of the Canadians' Charter rights, but that they are nonetheless justified as an acceptable limit in a free and democratic society because of the possibility for an accused to present “proof to the contrary” in order to rebut these presumptions. [Bill] C-32 takes the possibility of presenting “proof to the contrary” away from someone facing prosecution of impaired driving offences and thus, we believe contravenes the presumption of innocence and is not an acceptable limit in a free and democratic society. The second and equally important concern that we would have wished your committee to be aware of is the situation regarding the maintenance of the equipment (breath test equipment) used by police forces across the country following the arrests of Canadian citizens suspected of driving under the influence of alcohol. As you may be aware, there is presently no regulation regarding the repair and maintenance of this equipment, and the provinces and the individual police forces across the country are left to decide for themselves the nature of this maintenance. We have recently discovered that the Montréal Police Force does no preventative maintenance of their Intoxilyzer 5000Cs. The reality is that the Montréal Police Force does not even follow the recommendations of the manufacturer (CMI) regarding the initial setup of the Intoxilyzer 5000C, nor do they follow the recommendation of the Alcohol test committee regarding an acceptable breath test program. It can therefore be said that the equipment used by the Montréal Police Force do not respect the scientific norms in order to assure precise and accurate readings of individuals' blood alcohol levels. We fear that this situation can also be said for police forces across the country. Therefore if C-32 were to be adopted in its present form Parliament would thus be permitting individual Canadians to be found guilty, without the possibility to present “proof to the contrary”, and all this based on the results of equipment which can not be considered to be scientifically precise and accurate. The AADM, several recognized scientific experts in the field, as well as the undersigned have grave concerns regarding [Bill] C-32 and were preparing to submit these to you this coming fall.
I'll end it there.