We have, over the last several years, made the penalities higher. The evidence is overwhelming, not only in the impaired driving field but in other fields, that increasing the severity of the penalty is not what has the deterrent impact. What has the deterrent impact is an increase in the perceived risk of apprehension, and clearly that would be done with a lower blood alcohol level and also with random breath testing. What we often hear in Canada is that we have the toughest laws. It's not about tough laws; it's about effective laws. When we looked at effective laws--there are people who have spent their lives reviewing all kinds of traffic safety measures--they are consistent, whether the study came out of Oxford, Washington, Australia, or Europe: the things that work and have the most effect are random breath testing, which is the highest, and lowering permissible blood alcohol levels.
Let me just say one thing. I'm not opposed to streamlining the current criminal law. The current federal impaired driving law is horrifically complex and convoluted. It takes forever to process even a simple impaired driving case. So we can do much better administratively in terms of the process. But that alone won't get you substantial reductions. I think we have to understand that the rates of binge drinking are increasing in this country, particularly among young people. The rates of driving after drug use are increasing. So we have to take effective measures, and it appears to us that there are effective measures that have worked in countries similar to our own.
What MADD Canada is proposing in terms of a 0.05 offence is not simply lowering the limit. We've actually drafted legislation, which was introduced in the House of Commons, that would streamline procedures, would allow an individual to plead guilty without making a court appearance, and would have an automatic expungement of the criminal record after two years. It would address some of the concerns about the backlog in courts.