I'd like to begin with talking about the current status of impaired driving in Canada.
Since 1999 the progress in Canada on impaired driving is stalled. There are recent indicators from Transport Canada that the problem is getting worse. In fact, in 2004, 35% of the dead drinking drivers were alcohol positive; in 2005 that number went up to 38%. In 1999 that number was 29%. The current status quo on what we're doing with the Criminal Code as it applies to impaired driving is not an option going forward.
A bit about the statistics.... Sixty percent of the dead drinking drivers have a blood alcohol concentration of 0.15 or greater. This group, though, is not just made up of alcoholics or repeat offenders. Studies have shown that only about 35% of these dead drinking drivers fit the clinical profile of an alcoholic. Only a small number of these are repeat offenders.
A significant group in the dead drinking drivers is young drivers aged 16 to 25. They are episodic binge drinkers who do not fit the clinical description of an alcoholic. In fact, young drivers represent about 13% of the population in Canada, but they represent 32% of the dead drinking drivers, so again it's a group that's well overrepresented in the fatalities above 0.15. Another group is drinkers who are usually social drinkers who sometimes, for an occasion, episode drink and end up dead. They are also represented in that group that's 0.15 and higher.
The other thing is that the greatest decrease...and progress that we have made in Canada and other countries over the last 20 years has been in the dead drinking drivers 0.15 and over. Any kind of presentation that says this group of drivers is resistant to legislative change or other programming that we've done is just not true, and in fact that's where we've had the greatest savings of lives.
MADD Canada has three proposals for this committee. The first one is lowering the blood alcohol concentration level to 0.5. Why? Canada has the highest de facto Criminal Code level in the world. We have a 0.8 per se level that we've had since 1969. Our courts allow a margin of error of 0.2, so in fact the police do not enforce our Criminal Code limits until the person's BAC is 0.10 and over.
Traffic safety experts tell us that 0.5 should be the highest permissible level of drinking and then driving. In fact, when you look at 0.5 there's a lot of misinformation out there. Will that interfere with social drinking? Not the case. For example, a 200-pound man can drink six standard drinks or a six-pack of beer, regular strength, 5% alcohol, on an empty stomach in two hours and still be below the Criminal Code threshold of a paragraph 253(b) charge. A 120-pound woman can have three standard drinks and still be below that Criminal Code threshold. In our account, that's not social drinking; that's putting others who are on the road at risk.
Worldwide, when BAC levels have been lowered, no matter from what level to what level, the result has been a savings of lives. There is also the impression that lowering the BAC will increase the judicial workload and the police workload. In fact, it has the opposite effect. If you claim that it's going to be a fact, you're not taking into account the behavioural change that people will change their habits when it comes to drinking and driving.
If you look at everywhere else in the world where they've lowered the BAC levels, there has been no impact on police or judicial resources. In fact, there are studies showing that there are economic savings to our health care, our policing, and our judicial system over a long period of time.
The big debate with 0.05% is not what level, but whether it should be done federally or provincially. Over the years Parliament has dealt with a number of options looking at various ways of lowering the BAC and the accompanying penalties. There's also a model out there with the provinces for doing it administratively. In fact, since the model was put in place with the provinces over three years ago, the provinces have made no progress, and that's something federal parliamentarians need to consider.
Our second theme is random breath testing. Drinking and driving is a persistent problem in Canada. Only a small fraction of drinking drivers are apprehended or charged. Statistics show or estimate that one out of every 445 trips results in a Criminal Code conviction. The international success of random breath testing is significant in lowering alcohol-related deaths. In 2003, the European Commission recommended that all 26 member states introduce random breath testing programs.
If random breath testing is done comprehensively and with a good charter analysis, there should be no concerns with meeting the test of the charter. Canadians are routinely subject to random detection and search in their daily lives. I'm sure all of us were searched here today as we came into this room. If we try to board a plane or go into a government building, we're scanned and searched. The Canadian courts have upheld the constitutionality of random stopping, searching, and questioning of drivers in order to maintain traffic safety.
There is no question that reducing carnage caused by impaired driving continues to be a compelling and worthwhile government objective. In summary, random breath testing is one of the most effective means of deterring impaired drivers and lowering the number of alcohol-related deaths.
Third is the matter of ignition interlocks. There are 60,000 convictions each year in Canada for impaired driving. We currently have about 11,000 interlocks on vehicles. The provinces are working hard to enhance their interlock programs. In fact, the State of New Mexico is the first to introduce mandatory interlock programs for all convicted impaired drivers. In the past two years, New Mexico has had a 10% reduction in the number of deaths on their highways since the introduction of the mandatory interlock program. It should also be performance based. So it's easy to get on...you have to prove that the interlock needs to be removed, that you've been able to separate your drinking from your driving.
In its wisdom, the federal Parliament put the interlock provision in the Criminal Code to allow provinces to introduce alcohol interlock programs approximately 10 years ago. It also put in an accompanying hard suspension period of three months, six months, and nine months. But as we've become more knowledgeable about interlock programs, the hard suspension period has become a kind of hindrance to effective provincial programming on interlocks.
We'd like to ask the federal Parliament to either reduce the interlock hard suspension to 30, 60, or 90 days, or eliminate it altogether. That does not mean the driver would not serve the full prohibition period of their licence suspension, but it would allow them to serve the whole thing on the alcohol interlock. We'd like to ask you for that consideration.