Evidence of meeting #65 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 impaired.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Daryl Mayers  Chair, Alcohol Test Committee, Canadian Society of Forensic Science
Patricia Hynes-Coates  National President, Mothers Against Drunk Driving
Andrew Murie  Chief Executive Officer, Mothers Against Drunk Driving
John Bates  Chief of Police, Saint John Police Force
Catherine Latimer  Executive Director, John Howard Society of Canada
Michael Stewart  Program Director, Arrive Alive DRIVE SOBER
Louis Hugo Francescutti  Professor, School of Public Health, University of Alberta, As an Individual
Anne Leonard  President, Arrive Alive DRIVE SOBER
Rachelle Wallage  Chair, Drugs and Driving Committee, Canadian Society of Forensic Science
John Gullick  Chair, Canadian Safe Boating Council
Michael Vollmer  Vice-Chair, Canadian Safe Boating Council
Barry Watson  Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology, As an Individual
Thomas Marcotte  Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, Co-Director, Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research
Commissioner Doug Fryer  Assistant Commissioner, Road Policing Command, Victoria Police

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

Thank you very much, Mr. Stewart.

We will now move to Mr. Francescutti.

4:45 p.m.

Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti Professor, School of Public Health, University of Alberta, As an Individual

First of all, I'd like say that it's nice to come to Ottawa to see our tax dollars being well spent in renovating a building such as this. It is one of the nicest rooms I have ever appeared in. Good job.

Getting to the bill before us, I don't know why I am here. I checked to make sure I was supposed to be here and I was told I was. What I've tried to do is assemble my 35 years as an emergency physician and as someone who advocates for injury to share with you what I think are the most salient points that I've heard to date and in my preparation for coming here today.

Canada already has one of the highest rates of utilization amongst our young, and they are already driving on our roads. For those of you who are foolishly thinking this problem is going to start in July 2018, the problem is before us right now.

That's why when the CDC takes a look at how we compare internationally with other countries, we don't fare very well. This gentleman, Michael, just alluded to part of the reason. He said these things are called “accidents”. They're not accidents. They're part of a disease process, and that disease is the leading cause of death for Canadians under the age of 45. Under the age of 35, motor vehicle injuries are the leading cause of death in that age group. Between the ages of one and 19, injury is the leading cause of death.

What Canada has is thus an injury problem that's about to be compounded by new legislation that's going to legalize the use of cannabis. What you're going to see is what we've seen in Washington and Colorado. There's going to be an increase in fatalities. There's going to be an increase in young people, especially, trying cannabis. One in six of them is going to become addicted.

Addiction is a disease. It's not a weakness of character. These young addicts—and they are before us today, showing up in our emergency department on a regular basis—are not getting the treatment they need. If we cannot meet the demand today, we are definitely not going to meet the demand in July.

My recommendation is that we stop for a second and say that if Canada is really only the third country starting to dabble in legislation, we could do something that's uniquely Canadian and establish robust datasets that allow us to actually measure the consequences—the human consequences, the financial consequences, the disruption to our health care system and to our justice system—so that we have evidence to base our decisions on.

Right now, you're about to meet an industry, the cannabis industry, that is going to be far more sophisticated than the tobacco industry. They're going to normalize marijuana use, as being good for you. This whole notion of medicinal marijuana has shown you that this is a drug looking for a purpose.

People who want to smoke marijuana can go ahead and smoke marijuana. I think our responsibility as physicians and your responsibility as policy-makers is to get this right. Other countries have not gone down this path for a very good reason. If we choose to go down this path because it's an election promise or we think it's the will of the public, then let's be prepared to put our thinking hats on and actually measure the consequences, because there will be consequences.

We're stuck in old paradigms. Who says that it has to be police officers who administer the sobriety test? If you go to the County of Strathcona in Alberta, I'll tell you, those ladies and gentlemen know how to keep their roads safe. They use peace officers, sheriffs, and a combination of different tools.

I'd like to get to the question and answer period, because I would like to make absolutely sure that the questions on your minds are answered before we leave today. I can tell you right now, however, that anything that takes away from that 1.6 seconds in a vehicle.... When a driver is fully attentive—eyes on the road, hands on the wheel—and sees something and decides what to do and reacts, it takes 1.6 seconds.

We have already passed legislation that says it's okay to use a cellphone hands-free, which is faulty legislation not based on evidence. That's already causing carnage on our roadways. The chief who was sitting here talked about the cumulative effect of marijuana, fatigue, alcohol, other drugs in our vehicles, along with all the distractions. It just makes natural sense that we're going to see an increase in the carnage on our roadways.

Now, the good news is that automated vehicles are coming down the pipeline. Once automated vehicles are on their own, that is truly about the only thing that's going to save us from this carnage. People can smoke as much as they want and do whatever they want in these vehicles. These vehicles will drive themselves, and they will not crash as long as humans keep their hands off the controls.

My advice is this. Let's set up some robust data-measuring systems to truly measure the consequences of what we're unleashing here so that not only Canadians can learn, but provinces can learn, and other countries can learn from our experiment, because this is an experiment in progress.

4:50 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

Thank you very much for your testimony.

We're now going to go to questions.

Mr. Cooper.

4:50 p.m.

Conservative

Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.

I have a very brief question for Ms. Latimer. I don't believe you touched on mandatory breath testing, in terms of the John Howard Society's position. If you did, I missed it.

4:50 p.m.

Executive Director, John Howard Society of Canada

Catherine Latimer

I did not mention it. I should have mentioned it in terms of issues that will be subject to challenge in the litigation process, and that will slow the process and the court process down.

I have less of a difficulty with the mandatory breath testing than the mandatory blood testing challenge, mainly because it's a less intrusive process. When you're actually removing a blood sample from someone, there are a lot of uses to which that blood can be put that might not be strictly connected with sobriety or whatever.

We don't have a very strong position on it, except that we would worry about ensuring that the due process rights of those who are subject to it are protected.

4:55 p.m.

Conservative

Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB

Good. Thank you very much.

I'll now ask a question to Dr....

I'm sorry. How do you pronounce your name?

4:55 p.m.

Professor, School of Public Health, University of Alberta, As an Individual

4:55 p.m.

Conservative

Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB

Louis. Okay, there we go.

Based on what you're saying, I take it that if you could make a determination as to whether to go down this road or not, we shouldn't go down this road. But now that we are going down this road, you talked about the fact that there are going to be more fatalities, more accidents, and more youth using marijuana. You gave a figure that one in six youths would become addicted to marijuana.

Certainly a number of physicians have come forward to express real concern about youth using marijuana and the impact that has on brain development. I don't know if you're able to speak to that, but on the basis of the impact it has on brain development, the Canadian Medical Association, for example, has recommended that no one under the age of 25 be lawfully able to use marijuana.

4:55 p.m.

Professor, School of Public Health, University of Alberta, As an Individual

Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti

I like to share stories. Taking the cab in from the airport, I had an older hippie driving me. He said, “What are you up to today?” I said, “I'm going to this committee to talk about marijuana.” He goes, “Holy shit, marijuana. I used to smoke that all the time when I was a younger man, but the other day I was in the garage and the kids were smoking it, and I tried a hit. I took a really big puff and I held it in, and everyone was going, 'Don't do that.'” He found out why, because one simple puff knocked him out for about 45 minutes. It brought out some paranoia feelings that he had inside of him, and he said to the people who gave it to him, “What the heck is this?” The THC content in today's marijuana is nowhere near what it was when you smoked it.

If I were to ask in this room, how many of you have smoked or are currently smoking marijuana, all of a sudden you would see people getting very nervous, but if I were to ask you how many of you are diabetic on insulin, you wouldn't hesitate to show me your latest pen. There's this stigma around marijuana use, and you're absolutely correct. Up to the age of 25, the brain is developing. Any exposure under that age will lower the IQ, lower the ability to reason properly. It will have devastating consequences in the people who are genetically predisposed to have either schizophrenia or psychosis. It will unmask psychosis. We see it in our emergency department on a regular basis.

The other thing is that this magical drug that's supposed to prevent nausea actually causes cyclic vomiting, so people who smoke it in excess end up in our emergency departments for hours upon hours, and they can't stop smoking.

You're absolutely correct. The most important thing, Michael, is that the risk assessment centre in the brain doesn't fully develop until about age 25 to 30, so our most vulnerable population, whether they are in utero or whether they are growing up, are going to be impacted by this. That's why we have to have good data to show how we are going to treat these young men and women when they end up in this situation, because we're not treating them well right now.

4:55 p.m.

Conservative

Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB

Given that the government is intent on going down this road—and I agree with you; I would prefer that we not go down this road—do you have any suggestions in terms of amendments to the bill?

4:55 p.m.

Professor, School of Public Health, University of Alberta, As an Individual

Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti

I can't talk about this bill specifically, but what I can tell you is that I teach advocacy. The first thing I teach my advocate students is why we need advocates in the first place. Why do we need organizations such as this? If governments were doing their jobs properly and passing the right policy and right legislation, there would be no need for advocates within our society. The fact that we need advocates tells us something is not working.

One of the projects my graduate students did last year was to present to the Government of Alberta what they should do if they're going to go ahead with legalization. Their answer was very simple, that 100% of the revenues generated provincially and federally should be going towards mental health, addiction, and injury, because those dollars are not going to come from anywhere else.

You're going to create the greatest addicts in this country once that revenue starts coming in from cannabis. The treasury department is going to love that revenue. If you put that revenue into general revenue, the people who need it will not see it.

You cannot advertise your way out of this problem, because the bud producers of the world you'll see will have very slick campaigns that are going to try to normalize it. With the very fact that we have Ontario picking age 19 and Alberta picking age 18. I don't care what the other provinces pick. They're all picking them for political reasons. They're not picking them based on science.

5 p.m.

Conservative

Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB

Based on science, what would you say the age should be?

5 p.m.

Professor, School of Public Health, University of Alberta, As an Individual

Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti

It should be age 25, at a minimum. With anything less than that, you're not following the evidence. That's if you're going to go down the legalization route.

If you're going to go down it, and it looks as though we are—I'm not for or against it, but I think you can read between my lines—then let's do it properly and put in place the data so that a year from now, or two years from now, we can measure the impact and we can course-correct.

Other countries will be very grateful to Canada for doing that, because Colorado hasn't really done it well and neither has Washington. The reason they don't is that policy-makers don't want to get the bad answers. The way you don't get bad answers is by not collecting the information.

5 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

Thank you very much. That's your seven minutes.

5 p.m.

Conservative

Michael Cooper Conservative St. Albert—Edmonton, AB

Thank you.

5 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather

Mr. Boissonnault.

5 p.m.

Liberal

Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for presenting today. I appreciate it.

I'll start with Ms. Latimer. Regarding the Irish experience after mandatory roadside testing, it's important to maybe correct something from your testimony. We're not compelling people to give blood in a mandatory roadside screen. It's Breathalyzer. It's breath; that's the mandatory screen, not blood. I think that's important for the record.

The Irish experience showed a decrease, from 2006 levels to 2015, of 40% in the number of charges laid, because of the sophistication of the roadside testing. That tells me there's less pressure on the Irish criminal justice system now than there was in 2006.

I understand you said there could be charter challenges. We saw that with per se levels in 2008. It's using legal testimony before it has rinsed its way through the system.

We heard from Professor Hogg, who put that through his own screen. He didn't see any grounds on which it would be objectionable from a charter challenge perspective on sections 8, 9, or 10, and we'd be saved by section 1. I wonder if you can tell us specifically where you think there would be a charter challenge.

5 p.m.

Executive Director, John Howard Society of Canada

Catherine Latimer

I read with interest the Canadian Bar Association's brief on this, when they indicated that they thought there would be charter issues raised. I feel that they are absolutely correct. The reason is that this set of people who get caught tend not to be the disenfranchised group. You're dealing with people who can afford non-legal aid lawyers, and they will challenge these issues. It's a big hit for them, the mandatory minimums, the whole thing.

The alcohol-impaired driving issues are an area of law that is really intensely litigated. It will be litigated to try to figure out what these individual elements mean. If you're moving from over point whatever it is, to this and above, that is going to be litigated. Lawyers are going to try to figure out what that means. They're going to bring it to the courts. They're going to ask for rulings, and it's going to slow the process down.

Going back to the Irish experience, I'm not familiar with what has transpired in Ireland. However, if you're actually looking at changing behaviour, I'm not a big fan of deterrents, but when you have two lawful activities such as driving and drinking and it is the intersection, you have two basically law-abiding groups of people who don't want to get caught in that intersection.

It's a slightly different group that can be influenced here by both public awareness, and maybe by deterrents, but most effectively the likelihood or the perception that they're going to get stopped and that enforcement will hit them.

5 p.m.

Liberal

Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB

Thank you very much. I need to move on.

5 p.m.

Executive Director, John Howard Society of Canada

5 p.m.

Liberal

Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB

Mr. Stewart, I appreciate your testimony. I want to ask you a question and then see whether you're aware of a move that our government has made in recent weeks.

Is it the opinion of your organization that mandatory roadside screening will reduce impaired driving offences and help police catch more people who are offending?

5 p.m.

Program Director, Arrive Alive DRIVE SOBER

Michael Stewart

Mandatory breath testing has been brought up in our membership meetings before. We're of the belief that if the mandatory breath testing can survive a charter challenge, then we would fully support it. We're not experts on the law and on how it would deter people, but whatever steps the government can put in place to help prevent people from impaired driving and deter them, we fully support.

5 p.m.

Liberal

Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB

Based on the conversations with your members, would a mandatory roadside screen deter them from getting behind the wheel drunk?

5:05 p.m.

Program Director, Arrive Alive DRIVE SOBER

Michael Stewart

Not that I am aware of. I would defer that question to Ms. Leonard to see whether she is able to—

5:05 p.m.

Liberal

Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB

It's over to you, Anne.