There's no one reason. There's likely a combination of reasons.
If penalties go up of course they become more severe, and there's more of an inclination to want to fight the case. It's not so much the criminal penalties, it's more the provincial penalties that people want to fight because with the provincial penalties you lose your car. With the federal penalty you lose your licence or you pay a fine for the first time, but quite often at the provincial level you lose your licence for a long period of time.
There have also been changes in the processing procedures. Parliament enacted legislation a few years ago and the result was a significant amount of charter litigation with respect to those new laws. I indicated earlier that there has been a significant increase in trial delays in Quebec. Some of that may be attributable to the fact that many impaired driving cases were put on hold pending certain key appellate decisions working their way up through the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada. People are raising a number of novel defences tied to the charter so there's a combination of factors with respect to what's driving impaired driving rates.
The other important thing about impaired driving and why there has been success in bringing down the rate over the years is that it has been a combination of things. It's not just the penalty. It's also the likelihood of conviction, and more importantly, the likelihood of apprehension. That's why those RIDE programs are really important. What stops people from drinking and driving most is a fear that tonight they may get caught because the RIDE program is out. Other times people are willing to take a chance.