Evidence of meeting #15 for Justice and Human Rights in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was drivers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
February 28th, 2008 / 4:55 p.m.
Manager, Research and Policy, Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse
Sure. But we have a law to deal with those people too, people who are even at 80 or below 80. It's called “impaired driving”.
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
That's my next question. Let's stay with this one.
The second part of the question is, at 70, is there anybody who's not impaired?
4:55 p.m.
Manager, Research and Policy, Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse
I think you'll find lots of people who aren't. I believe we heard it earlier. There are people at 270 who will not show gross signs of intoxication at all.
4:55 p.m.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
No, I'm asking at the bottom end. At 70, is there anybody who's not impaired?
4:55 p.m.
Manager, Research and Policy, Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse
Certainly, absolutely, no question.
4:55 p.m.
Chair, Alcohol Test Committee, Canadian Society of Forensic Science
I'd have to disagree with that. It's not that they're not impaired, it's that their degree of impairment is less. But is their ability to operate a motor vehicle impaired at 70? Yes. Their degree of impairment will depend on their driving experience and their drinking experience, but they will be more greatly impaired at high blood alcohol concentrations. There's no doubt in my mind that there's still a risk of accidents at that level. Scientifically, we don't talk about “Is everybody in the world impaired”, but rather, if you take any individual at that blood alcohol concentration, they will have a degree of impairment, even at 70. It will be less than that same individual's impairment at 80, at 100, at 160.
To answer your earlier question, my experience from working day to day with crown attorneys and police is that, at least in Ontario, there is only one jurisdiction that was regularly charging above 90. That was in the region where I live, in Durham, and they have suspended that for a time because of the large backlog of cases. They are now offering those individuals “careless driving”. So, practically, police officers charge at breath readings of 100 or greater, and they're prosecuted at those readings. Sometimes individuals show signs of impairment at the roadside, and when they're brought back, they may have blood alcohol readings that are below 100. They're charged with a paragraph 253(a) impaired. They may bring us in to support their impairment at those lower levels, but the main focus of that prosecution would likely be the impairment, due to the observations of the officers or other witnesses.
5 p.m.
Chair, Strategy to Reduce Impaired Driving, Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators
Could you repeat the first question, Mr. Comartin?
5 p.m.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
It's a two-part question.
One, do you agree with the analysis that the vast majority of charges in Canada are laid at 100 or above?
Two—I'm arguing if we drop it to 50, we'll probably just charge people at 70 or above—do you agree that anybody who's at 70 or above is impaired?
5 p.m.
Chair, Strategy to Reduce Impaired Driving, Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators
I'll agree with the first point, but I'd like to make a comment that the people taken off the road in Canada are not only restricted to the ones who are criminally charged. A vast majority of people who are currently taken off the road in the different jurisdictions—
5 p.m.
Chair, Strategy to Reduce Impaired Driving, Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators
Yes, I'm developing this, if you could bear with me for a minute.
There's a vast number of people who are taken off the road at the lower level as well.
I think when you look at the groups that are looking at a Criminal Code approach or an administrative approach, we do not disagree with the need to take these people off the road. I think where we differ is on what would be the most effective way of doing it.
We believe, in view of the comment that Mr. Langille just made, from a practical perspective, taking the administrative route and putting more teeth into the administrative approach so that these people are not taken off the road for just 24 hours but for a longer period of time and with greater consequences will lead to a much more overall efficient and effective way of swiftly taking these people off the road and applying the section to these people.
5 p.m.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Mr. Quaye, we heard evidence on this that the provincial programs--and the Province of Quebec is the worst culprit in this regard--to try to make the administrative side work just haven't been very successful, and our impaired rates are going up.
5 p.m.
Chair, Strategy to Reduce Impaired Driving, Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators
I will comment on that, but if you go back, we have in the CCMTA something called a strategy to reduce impaired driving. If we had a slide show here and showed you a picture of the types of laws and legislation that were in the different provinces in 1990 when we started this process and the types of laws and policies in the jurisdictions today, were you to look at the two pictures, you would see a vastly different landscape in terms of laws and policies. We know that this issue of short-term suspension is now on the agenda, as it were. As to whether we are optimistic that change will take place and change will take place quickly, we would say yes. We would say yes based on experience. We would say yes based on many years of experience in trying to handle these issues of impaired driving.
For example, the Province of Ontario quite recently made huge changes to the way it deals with short-term suspensions. The Province of Saskatchewan made huge changes recently with respect to how to deal with it. Will the other provinces change? I am very optimistic. We believe that through CCMTA we can make this happen, and happen very quickly.
5:05 p.m.
Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Department of Justice
I'll just say with respect to the 0.05 issue, in the study “Relative Risk of Fatal Crash Involvement by BAC, Age and Gender”, done by the United States Department of Transportation, they actually divided males and females by three age groups. If you are a male at 0.050 to 0.079 the relative risk, if you are 16 to 20, of being involved in a fatal crash they calculated to be 17.32 times what it would be if you were a sober 16- to 20-year-old. By the time you are 35, it is down to 5.71. For females 16 to 20, it is 7.04. By the time they're 35, it is 5.79, in that range. They calculated that on the basis of masses of detail.
We aren't social scientists, but we can look at these things. There is, I believe, some fairly strong evidence of seriously higher risk of accident at 0.05 to 0.08.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
5:05 p.m.
Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Department of Justice
I can download this from the Internet again. It's right on NHTSA's site, so I'll provide it.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Art Hanger
That's fair enough. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Hoskins, are the Nova Scotia courts pretty much prosecuting at 100 or over?
5:05 p.m.
Q.C., As an Individual
It has been my experience that it's pretty much 100 or over. That's not to say there may not be a few cases under that, but generally speaking it is over 100.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
5:05 p.m.
Q.C., As an Individual
The code says “exceeds eighty milligrams”, so if it were 100, I can't say what they would say, but there is a presumption of accuracy that would be challenged, I would presume, as you get lower. Often with defence counsel, the lower the BAC, the more you'll have to argue the presumption, which is that the machine was working correctly at that time.