Evidence of meeting #63 for Justice and Human Rights in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was alcohol.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
I'm going to ask the analysts if they can try to find that out for members of the committee, and we'll let you know.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
Yes, I'm sure that if we find that information, we'll be happy to share it with you and hear your thoughts on it.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
I think you're quite right. It's so important to make sure that we have all the best information available, because I think everyone here agrees that the incidence of impaired driving in this country is unacceptable and that we have to do what we can to reduce the incidence and, of course, the tragedies such as the one you've so powerfully described to us. We have to be thoughtful about it to make sure that we get it right, and that we are doing it in all aspects of the criminal law, but also with public awareness, education campaigns, working with the insurance industry, so I think your thoughts are very helpful in that regard. We'll find out about the comparative—
Director, Alberta, Families For Justice
As I said, there are many sides to this coin. There are many sides. It's not only one thing. That's how I look at it.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
Looking at the bill as a whole, I guess leaving aside mandatory minimums, and I totally understand what you're saying, what are your thoughts on aspects of the bill in general, leaving aside for a moment the sentencing aspect? Do you see positive attributes in the bill helping to reduce impaired driving?
Director, Alberta, Families For Justice
I hate to be negative, but no. What I saw when I studied the bill was that besides the mandatory being completely removed, it also reduced the punishments considerably for the first, second, and third time. When you are caught at a road check, say, they're leaving those exactly the same as in 2008, where they had gone up in Bill C-73 and Bill C-226. The only difference that they're making in this bill is in adding that $500 increment, depending on how much alcohol you're over limit. I think if you're almost double, you'll pay another $500.
In this day and age, I don't understand it.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
Ms. Arsenault, I really want your answer and I'd like to hear your thoughts on the mandatory alcohol screening or random breath test. Are you in favour of that and think that's a good measure in order to reduce impaired driving?
Director, Alberta, Families For Justice
The random breath testing, to me, will not help the hard-core habitual drivers, and those are the ones who cause death. The person who goes out and has a beer or two with their dinner and may blow .06 or .07, they're not typically the ones who did the devastation, like what happened to my son. It's usually the people who are more than twice over.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
What are your thoughts on, as Mr. Braid and Mr. Treasure alluded to, the closing of the loopholes with regard to legal defences that are available, the bolus defence, the intervening drink defence? I assume you support measures to close those loopholes.
Director, Alberta, Families For Justice
I mentioned that. I'm very happy they've plugged those loopholes. As I said, many aren't even charged because of those loopholes. They cannot prove one way or the other if they were impaired at the time of the collision. That's one thing, I'm very happy they've plugged those loopholes .
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
If we have time at the end of the round we'll do a short snapper, but let's try to get everybody in.
Mr. Stetski.
NDP
Wayne Stetski NDP Kootenay—Columbia, BC
I'd like to join with my colleagues in offering my sincere condolences and thank you for your advocacy and your courage.
I'm going to focus my questions on the insurance industry. I have three questions and I'll roll them all out at once.
The insurance industry is renowned for collecting statistics on all kinds of things. First of all, have you seen statistics that show that the stiffer the penalty, whether it's a case of drunk driving or other crimes, leads to a reduction in that crime, particularly around auto accidents? That's the first question.
The second question is whether or not insurance rates have gone up for vehicles in Washington and Colorado as a result of legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, and if you've looked at that.
The third question is that some of my constituents from Kootenay—Columbia have asked whether, when filling in an assessment for home insurance, one of the future questions will be whether they are growing the four plants that the law allows, and whether that would change the insurance rates on their house if they check “yes”.
Those are my three questions.
Chief Executive Officer, Insurance Brokers Association of Canada
Thank you very much for those questions.
Perhaps to help provide some context, the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada, of course, represents insurance brokers across the land. We don't represent insurance companies per se. We work closely with insurance companies, but our brokers we represent work and advocate for insurance consumers. Therefore, while some of these questions may be more appropriately directed to insurance companies, I think Mr. Treasure, who is of course the broker between the two of us, the insurance broker, may be able to provide some perspective from a more technical standpoint.
In terms of statistics and deterrents, I can't point to any specific statistics that I have before me. I will defer to the wisdom of the committee to continue to consider and be open to appropriate deterrents and penalties. I think they play an important role in reducing incidents. As part of your openness, I hope that you continue to consider the testimony of individuals like Ms. Arsenault as well.
At this point, I will turn it over to my colleague, Mr. Treasure, who can perhaps address some of the most technical aspects.
President-Elect, Insurance Brokers Association of Canada
—or at least touch on them or promise to get you information.
It was interesting in listening to the previous testimony, I had the same thought with regard to stats about the effectiveness of stiffer penalties. It's certainly something of interest, but not anything that we have access to or any information on right now.
With regard to the question about insurance rates in Oregon and Denver, I tried to make a few calls, as the president-elect of IBAC. I spoke to the Insurance Bureau of Canada and asked some questions, and they didn't have a lot of information. It is an interesting thing to be looking at. When something is going to affect our numbers, we're all about it, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of panic over this particular issue, just as a consequential piece, but we can look into that. We have annual meetings where we get together with the group the Big “I” in the United States, and we can definitely look into that and provide some more information about insurance rates in Oregon and Denver with regard to recreational marijuana.
I'm a commercial broker. I'm not a personal lines broker, but I was in a previous life. With regard to the question of growing in the house, in the end it's not illegal to have a hydroponic operation for your grandma's heirloom tomatoes in your house. That is allowed. It's a material change in risk, so the insurance company is generally going to want to know that you have the proper venting and the proper equipment set up in order to make sure that it's not affecting the house long term, risk-wise. Generally speaking, that would likely be the answer in that case.
Director, Alberta, Families For Justice
I would just add something, because you asked him the question about whether stiffer sentences do or do not deter. I skipped that out, because I knew I didn't have a whole lot of time left. From my studying and everything I've been reading, with a lot of help from my family, my father especially, and from everything we could find about whether they deter or not, everything was inconclusive. There was as much support for mandatory minimums as there was against, so it's just inconclusive.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much.
I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Ehsassi.
Liberal
Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON
Madam Arsenault, I'd like to join all my colleagues in thanking you from the bottom of my heart for the amazing advocacy that you are doing. Thank you for your compelling testimony and, rather than cursing the darkness, for lighting a candle that we can all use. I'll take advantage of your presence here to ask you a couple of questions.
As you know, the majority of impaired drivers are repeat offenders. That's something that the StatsCan representative who was here before you was highlighting, and I think you were actually here when he was testifying. Given that reality, are you in favour of interlock devices? Do you think that would be an effective means?
Director, Alberta, Families For Justice
Yes, I would be in favour of that. As someone who witnessed first-hand the devastation impaired driving does, I'd pretty much be in favour of anything. Yes, I would be in favour of that being offered, but there still has to be some punishment. For me, if somebody keeps driving drunk and keeps getting caught, that might put the level playing field on. If a guy or a girl has money, they can afford the interlock, whereas if another person doesn't make the same kind of money, they may lose their job. There are a lot of things to consider with interlock. I always try to put myself in the shoes of everybody, and I've thought of that.
Liberal
Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON
Absolutely to your point, it's a very complex challenge that we're dealing with. There are a number of different elements that would certainly help deal with this challenge.
Another thing you may have heard is that the government recently announced that they would provide $81 million of funding to prevent drug-impaired driving, and that's for the purposes of providing training to officers. Do you think that's an effective measure?
Director, Alberta, Families For Justice
It's hard for me to judge that. It seems like a lot of money to me. Canada is a large country, all the little towns and the big cities. For all our police, the RCMP, and city police, to have that training in place by the summer will be quite a task.
You know what I always ask, why weren't we doing this before? Marijuana has been around forever. People were driving on marijuana already, but now all of a sudden we're going to train our police. I kind of wonder why we haven't been doing this all along.
Liberal
Ali Ehsassi Liberal Willowdale, ON
Following in the same vein about all of the various things that can be done, I would ask Mr. Treasure and Mr. Braid a question.
Looking at the various options that are available when it comes to drug-impaired driving, where do you think the emphasis should be? Should it be on creating effective screening devices, or would it be consequences that follow the commitment of impairment...?
Is it sentencing or coming up with better technology resources?