Honourable members, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you this evening as you continue your study of Bill C-46.
I note that there are some familiar faces around the table, but for those of you who may not be aware, I'm appearing before you tonight as the president of the Canadian Police Association, an organization that represents more than 60,000 front-line civilian and sworn police professionals serving across Canada.
As I have testified before, I also note that I'm a police officer in the city of Vancouver. I am, however, seconded from the Vancouver Police Department to the Vancouver Police Union as its president. I'm also the president of the British Columbia Police Association, an association of all the municipal police unions in the province of British Columbia.
My opening remarks will be brief. I want to begin to saying that the Canadian Police Association supports Bill C-46, which represents one of the most significant modernizations of our country's impaired driving laws that I can remember.
I know that all members around the table share our goal of getting impaired drivers, whether they are impaired by alcohol or drugs, off our streets. While we may at times differ when it comes to specific tactics, I believe the provisions of this legislation, if enacted, will have a significant and positive impact on our efforts.
I'm sure most of you are aware that impaired driving imposes one of the most significant demands on the resources of almost every Canadian police service. While there's no question we've had success through education in reducing the number of impaired driving incidents, there aren't many officers you could talk to in this country who don't have at least one heartbreaking story about responding to a motor vehicle accident where alcohol or drugs were a factor.
I'm confident in saying that the changes proposed by Bill C-46, specifically those that allow for mandatory roadside testing, will help our officers more effectively reduce the number of those stories, although I do understand that some concerns have been raised regarding civil liberties, our fundamental rights, and the potential for infringement under this regime. I want to say that, in this regard, police officers across the country are already asked and trained to exercise a tremendous amount of discretion every day in the execution of their duties, and that will continue.
While opponents of this mandatory screening have painted a picture where officers will regularly be randomly stopping motorists and demanding breath samples, I can say from a practical standpoint that this is simply impossible to imagine. The familiar holiday checkpoints will remain, but what these new provisions will allow us to do is eliminate many of the inefficiencies that plague impaired driving prosecutions.
As I'm sure this committee is aware, studies, particularly those done by researchers at Simon Fraser University, have shown that under the current regime, a single impaired driving case can take a police officer off the road for up to eight hours. The legislation you're considering today will have a meaningful and positive impact in that regard, particularly by eliminating many of the common defences now used to beat the charges. Most notable are arguments regarding reasonable suspicion and whether or not an officer had grounds to pursue breath testing in the first place.
I should also note very briefly that steps taken in this legislation to eliminate the bolus drinking and intervening drinking defences are very much appreciated by our members. Additional clarity within legislation is always preferable, and while some people will never fully be deterred from drinking and driving, I'm hopeful that explicitly restricting these two common defences that officers hear every day will help in the long run.
As I mentioned, I want to keep my opening remarks brief, as I believe I can help you best by answering any questions you might have about the current state of impaired driving enforcement or how these new changes might impact front-line police personnel in this country.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you this evening. I look forward to continuing this discussion.