Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to address this issue today. The hon. member for Prince George-Bulkley Valley has moved a motion asking the government to strengthen penalties for impaired driving offences in order to enhance deterrence and bring the penalties into line with the seriousness of the offence.
Let me say for the record that I support the motion of the hon. member and I am happy to do so. I do, however, want to in my speech today broaden the debate around this whole issue and say as a starting point generally I support what works. I think the whole issue of drunken driving and how to solve the issue of excessive drinking and the problems that arise from it is a complicated one and there are no simple solutions.
I support the member's concern for ensuring that penalties for drunken driving are proportional to the crime. I believe that whether penalties currently provided for in the Criminal Code are proportional to the offence of drunken driving is a debatable point and I look forward to this bill's being approved and passed on to committee where it can be debated more fully.
In considering the deterrent effect of criminal laws and criminal penalties we have to take into account the different types of people who commit drinking and driving offences and how they might be best influenced. Not everyone has the same motivation depending on their age, their background and not everyone will be affected the same way by a change in the law.
I believe that people are deterred from drinking and driving by a host of factors. Criminal law penalties for drinking and driving are undoubtedly an important factor but, as I have said, not the only factor.
The challenge is to find the point at which criminal penalties do represent a strong deterrent and the point at which they do not. If we stray beyond that point we risk a situation where we have little return in terms of increased deterrence for the effort placed into increasing the penalties. Such a situation would tell us that our efforts to decrease drinking and driving could be better located in other areas that would bring significantly greater deterrence.
There seems to be at least four different kinds of people who commit drinking and driving crimes. I am not sure that all four types would response positively simply because the criminal penalties for drinking and driving crimes were increased from what they are.
First, there are the young people who commit drinking and driving crimes. Some of them are not even of legal drinking age. For many of these, illicit drinking is a form of rebellion or an expression of their growing desire to be an adult or a response to peer pressure, or a combination of these factors and others. A concurrent drinking and driving crime might simply by a response to the same factors that precipitated the illicit drinking. With young people who drink and drive there may be little or no thought about any of the potential consequences of drinking and driving, whether it be death, injury, criminal consequences or licence and insurance consequences, even if there is the sensation that "it won't happen to me"; that well known teenage sense that they are invulnerable may overcome good sense as it often does in other circumstances.
Perhaps increased deterrence might be best accomplished for young persons through the use of peer counselling or public education. I think it entirely possible that increased penalties under the Criminal Code would be somewhat in the bottom half of the list of measures that would actually deter these young people who commit drinking and driving crimes.
It is doubtful to me that increased criminal penalties would have any greater effect on the young person's decision about drinking and driving than the current criminal penalties have.
A second type of person who commits drinking and driving crime is the otherwise responsible adult drinker who in a moment of bad judgment drinks too much and then makes the alcohol impaired decision to drive or who drinks and then takes an irresponsible but calculated risk to drive. I imagine that such calculated risks typically focuses on the likelihood of detection by the police, that any thought about personal safety or the safety of others is put out of mind and does not enter the equation.
It seems to me that increasing the penalties for drinking and driving crimes would not do much to deter such persons. They are weighing out whether they will get caught. They are not concerned that the minimum penalty is at present $300 or $1,000 or that they might have to spend 30 days in jail as a minimum for a second offence rather than the present 14 days for a second offence.
This group might be better deterred by focusing on certainty of detection or alternatives to driving or on messages that will help the individuals to think about small but unacceptable risk of death or injury to self or others. In other words, we might be better off instead of spending money on putting more people in jail, to spend more money on police as a deterrence to drinking and driving.
Next, there would appear to be a group of people with unique problems who choose to drink and drive. These are the alcoholics who compound a drinking problem with driving after they drink.
I am careful to note that there are, on the other side of the matter, some persons who are alcoholics who very responsibly choose not to drive after they drink. They find other solutions to any transportation needs they have after they have been drinking.
Perhaps conquering the underlying alcoholism provides the best hope for alcoholics who drive after drinking. However, not all alcoholics are prepared to admit that they have a problem that requires treatment.
Certainly it seems important to encourage alternatives to driving after drinking, given that many alcoholics are not prepared to admit to a problem or to submit to treatment.
It should disturb all of us that if we are going to be sending more people to jail we need also to put in more resources within the jails so that they can bring in alcohol problems or drug abuse problems so that at the end of the day we find something that actually does work and helps solve the problem.
There is a fourth group of persons who commit drinking and driving crimes. These are the people who simply do not care what happens to themselves or to others as a result of their behaviour. If they want to drink, they do and if they want to drive, they will. If somebody gets killed or injured along the way, that is just the way it goes.
Increasing the penalties for Criminal Code drinking and driving offences would have no impact on this small but very frightening group. Ultimately the decision about drinking and driving rests with individuals of all types and minds.
For those of us who do not drink and drive, the solution seems simple. If you drink, do not drive. If you cannot stay where you are, have someone drive you. If you cannot walk or take a taxi, then do not drink.
While to you and me the risk, however remote, of having a tragic accident and killing someone if we were to drink and drive is likely to be a great deterrent, there are those who are simply not deterred by this thought, nor are they deterred by the criminal law consequences, whether they be present penalties or increased penalties.
For these reasons, rather than boosting criminal penalties, I would prefer to see further development of drinking and driving counter measures that aim to change attitudes to the point where driving and drinking become completely unacceptable in all circumstances, not only in those circumstances where death or injury occurs.
This would necessarily involve finding ways to help people keep their drinking separate from any driving. Efforts would have to be specific to the characteristics of the different groups that I have broadly set out so that there would be the greatest effect for the work that is done.
More important, individuals would have to begin taking responsibilities for what they do and say in their homes and schools, offices and communities to prevent drinking and driving.
I am not suggesting that criminal law penalties have no deterrent value; quite the contrary. We all know that they are. They are and our present penalties already hold significant deterrent value.
However, it is far more effective to combine criminal penalties with a range of other attempts to combat drinking and driving. Training for service personnel in bars and the use of designated non-drinking drivers are examples of efforts that help prevent drinking and driving.
Public education that raises the issue and helps young people to think of the consequences and to make the decision not to drive after drinking before they find themselves at a party is another example.
Families can encourage all family members to call for a ride with no questions asked should they ever drink and not have a method of transportation available. Similarly, families can encourage their members to call for help rather than accept a ride from a drinking driver.
In short, we have to make it socially unacceptable to drink and drive. We are now getting there. No doubt there are people who obey the law if only because it is the law. For others, the risk of death or of killing someone else is a far greater deterrent than the increased penalty that might be imposed under the criminal law in the event that they were detected and convicted.
It is clear that the largest percentage of victims among persons killed by drinking drivers are the drinking drivers themselves and their passengers, rather than the other people in vehicles or on foot.
Rather than looking at someone who tries to keep someone else from driving after drinking as a killjoy or a busybody, we need to reach the point where intervening is the socially responsible thing to do.
Criminal law can be asked to do its part to reduce drinking and driving. In my view it already does. Whether it could do more is a debatable point but we should not rely solely on the criminal law and we should allow other systems and other players to play a role in order to end the tragic waste brought about through drinking and driving.
It is a trap to think that only increased penalties under the criminal law can make a difference.