Right.
Evidence of meeting #68 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 vote.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #68 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 vote.
A recording is available from Parliament.
7:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
—then it's going to be conclusively presumed to be what it is 10 hours later, and somebody would have to come to rebut that presumption.
7:50 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair. That is in fact my intention.
With where it is right now, there is a deemed presumption of a higher blood alcohol level than that which you've actually tested, and it is set at a certain amount for every half hour. To rebut that presumption, you'd need to call a toxicologist. Whereas, if you cut it off right after as the case may be, the provision is more evidence based and less of an inferred and assumed level of blood alcohol.
7:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Okay, I still think it makes it more difficult.
Mr. Boissonnault, do you have a comment?
7:50 p.m.
Liberal
Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB
My understanding is that with the way we drafted this, we want to improve trial efficiencies and reduce the need to compel toxicologists to come and to give judges the ability to do the calculations on their own.
With all due respect to Ms. May, this would change that, would abrogate it, and in my limited knowledge of how the Criminal Code operates, it would make proposed 320.28(4) inoperable. That would defeat the whole point of what we're trying to do here.
7:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Are there other comments from anyone?
Ms. May, do you want to finish?
7:50 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
I want to say to my friend Mr. Boissonnault that it's certainly not inoperable. It's operable as a presumption of what kind of blood alcohol levels you've found, without deeming additional levels that you haven't been able to find through testing.
7:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
The only question I have is that all of the evidence that we had before us indicated that the farther away you are from drinking, your level goes down.
Now we're creating a presumption that your level will be exactly what it is when it's tested many, many hours later. It seems to be a faulty presumption.
7:50 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
What I'm putting forward is based on a lot of the evidence to this committee.
If you continually put the burden on the accused—and the burden has now shifted substantially throughout the legislation to the accused—there's a level at which you may in fact have false convictions because someone is economically unable to defend themselves by bringing in toxicology evidence to reverse the presumption.
7:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Yes, I understand that too.
All right, are any further comments?
Not hearing any, let's move to a vote on PV-4.
(Amendment negatived on division [See Minutes of Proceedings])
Now we move to NDP-4.
7:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you for joining us today, Ms. May.
On NDP-4, Mr. Julian.
7:55 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I won't spend a lot of time on this amendment because it's very similar to the first amendment, NDP-1, that I presented earlier tonight.
I wanted to remind members of the committee that we've had testimony that there's up to a 20% likelihood that individuals who are innocent would be found to have consumed drugs through what is currently a very faulty type of testing. The intent here is to delete that section.
(Amendment negatived on division [See Minutes of Proceedings])
7:55 p.m.
Conservative
Rob Nicholson Conservative Niagara Falls, ON
This goes back again to the discussion we had a little earlier about when and where other types of bodily substances or fluids can be used. In this particular one I'm adding along with “breath, blood, urine, sweat or other bodily substance...”.
We already had the words “other bodily substance”. It already takes into account the fact that it could be sweat. I'm pointing out that it may be sweat, and this is where the technology seems to be going. It always seems to me the less intrusive we can be on people the better off we are. I hope this will get the support of the committee.
7:55 p.m.
Liberal
Colin Fraser Liberal West Nova, NS
Yes. In other areas we're not including sweat, but I recognize that this one is “other bodily substances”, which would encapsulate sweat, so this is different from the other one. I don't see the harm in adding that word.
(Amendment agreed to on division [See Minutes of Proceedings])
7:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
We are on NDP-5.
Mr. Julian, this is adding the records of the maintenance of the device.
7:55 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Adding “the historical results of the approved instrument's maintenance records” does amend the clause.
To provide some of the evidence that this committee heard to support our amendment NDP-5, we heard from Sarah Leamon who said that currently maintenance records are being employed in Washington state. She said:
Yes. We have seen that being employed in Washington state and, to my understanding, employed very well, to the benefit of really all parties to a criminal proceeding and to the public. We want to make sure our police officers are doing things correctly. We really do. I feel my role, often, as a criminal defence lawyer is to make sure that police officers are conducting themselves properly according to the charter, providing motorists and other people with those charter rights, but also that they're maintaining equipment, such as breath testing equipment, in a proper way. That transparency really helps. I think it helps assure the public, and there's no reason why we can't use the benefit of the Internet to do this.
We heard testimony that reinforces the advisability of accepting or adopting NDP-5.
7:55 p.m.
Liberal
Randy Boissonnault Liberal Edmonton Centre, AB
I listened to the testimony, and I want to make sure that we're empowering police officers to do what we're asking them to do. I think this amendment would slow their process and would also result in longer trials. Even if the information is available online, I'm suspecting that a clever defence lawyer would be using this very quickly to talk about the completion of those records, where the server resides, and so on. I think this opens up a whole bunch of onerous implications that we can't fully study at this point.
8 p.m.
NDP
Peter Julian NDP New Westminster—Burnaby, BC
Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
This system is already in place in Washington state. One might laugh at Washington state. I certainly don't. They're our neighbours to the south.