I can't tell you about the numbers or percentages, as Mr. Di Luca did, but what I can tell you, as a lawyer who appears almost daily in the Ontario Court of Justice, is that in Ontario, at least, our courtrooms are in crisis. Every day, charges are being stayed on the basis of unreasonable delay.
And I can tell you, the harder you make the penalties for drinking and driving offences, the harder people fight them. It used to be that the only concerns people had were about licence suspensions, but I can tell you that in the last five or ten years, people have been equally concerned about the consequences of a criminal record.
I think I read somewhere that changing the rate to 50 mg% from 80 mg% will increase charges by about 40%. Our system is already in crisis and it can't handle what we now have, and I don't know how it's going to handle more charges. If you add 40% to the caseload without significant injections of resources, you will be responsible for a crisis of delays far worse than the Askov crisis of 1991.
Our crowns in Ontario are already grossly overworked and grossly short of resources. Believe it or not, senior crown attorneys in Ontario are responsible for tasks such as faxing and photocopying. If you add 40% to their workload, we're obviously going to have a very significant problem.
You also have to think about the police. I'm sure at some point you're going to hear, or have already heard, how long it takes a police officer to process someone from the time of arrest till release. Right now, if someone is pulled over and they blow over 50 mg%, their licence is immediately suspended on the spot, and the time the police have is probably only minutes. Suddenly, every time someone blows a “warn”, or blows over 50 mg%, they're going to be off the road for significant periods of time. Add to that the fact that breath technicians have to take tests if someone is arrested for over 80 mg%. They are also obligated by statute to administer those tests forthwith or as soon as practicable. Again, if you increase the load by 40%, we're not going to have enough breath technicians and we're not going to have enough machines.
So unless you're prepared to ensure that there is a massive injection of resources, you're heading towards what I would say is a disaster.