I think any reasonable examination of the history of impaired driving laws would show that they have been around for a long time. They have been adjusted quite often, and at the end of that, like many carpenters working on renovations to a house, it may not be that the golden thread is as evident throughout. Partly the effort here is to make sure that where there are duplicate offences, where needlessly specific offences are covered by more general provisions, we should streamline and simplify that.
I think the Law Reform Commission at one point described parts of this law as virtually unintelligible even to senior lawyers and crowns. That's not good for anyone, for ordinary Canadians, for those who want to help address this, or for those who are involved in the administration, the ordinary police officer or the judge or the lawyer. The effort here is to ensure that the harms to be addressed are covered by appropriately descriptive provisions, but also to streamline and reduce where there's overlap, or in some cases frankly, needlessly specific offences, where the more general would be sufficient.
I think that's a fair summary of the effort to try to streamline and simplify this and to make the law more effective and more easily applied. This is one of the most heavily litigated areas of criminal law, and we think we can streamline and make the law equally effective without leaving a public harm that ought to be addressed outside the law.