Mr. Speaker, the admission by the parliamentary secretary that the problem is serious and that the bill is not a panacea were about the only things he got right.
This is in fact a very serious problem. Drug impaired driving will be fuelled by the companion legislation, Bill C-17, which is the decriminalization of marijuana. Bill C-16 would not address that problem.
Bill C-16 is nothing more than window dressing and a very lame attempt by the government to try to deal with a serious situation that it will be creating on our roads, a situation that will directly lead to more deaths and injuries. I want to say, before I begin my debate on the bill, that by its action the government will be killing and injuring more people on the streets of Canada.
The public should also understand that there is no effective roadside testing device like the alcohol technology that has been developed. When a police officer sees a motor vehicle wandering along the road, if the individual is stopped and there is a smell of alcohol on his or her breath, the officer can demand that the person breathe into a roadside testing device. Those are good indicators of the amount of alcohol. There is either a pass, fail or a warning on the machine.
We do not have that kind of technology when it comes to dealing with drug impaired drivers. Drug impaired drivers are no less dangerous than alcohol impaired drivers. In fact, many people do not realize that when the effects of alcohol and drugs are combined, including marijuana, an even greater impairment occurs.
When people say that they are only going to drink a couple of beers, then smoke marijuana and get into a car, that is much more serious than even taking a lot more drinks. The impairment is multiplied. The government needs to know that information when it turns this legislation loose on our public. The technology for that has not been developed. In fact, a justice official said that the RCMP or the other police officers would have all kinds of physical tests. They will make drivers hop on one leg or they will look at the involuntary reaction in their eyes. What nonsense. What is terrible is that it is coming from legal minds in the Department of Justice of Canada. These individuals know better. They know the poor rate of conviction for impaired driving when there are not these technological devices. That is the kind of nonsense they are trying to tell the people of Canada. They should be ashamed for telling Canadians that this kind of detection will result in more convictions.
As a former prosecutor, I know how difficult it is to convict people of impaired driving. Even in the situation where alcohol is involved and where the smell of alcohol is on people's breaths it is difficult to make a charge when there is no alert or breathalyzer to help.
There are situations though where there is no alcohol involved and it is simply drugs and that becomes even more difficult for the purpose of trying to prove that an individual is impaired by his driving through drug use. Hopping on one leg or involuntary reaction in the eye can be excused in many ways and the justice department lawyers, who have been telling that to the justice minister, know that and should be ashamed of themselves.
The statistics are overwhelming in respect of the acquittals for impaired driving. Some provinces will not even bother prosecuting an impaired driver if there was no breathalyzer or no alert. Impaired driving used to be called section 234 when I was prosecuting and .08 was section 236. That was the way it was done. The impaired driver was simply stayed and the prosecutor tried to get them on .08.
There is another thing that Canadians do not realize. Take a look at Martin’s Annual Criminal Code and see how many technical defences there are to impaired driving and .08. It is more difficult to convict someone of impaired driving and .08 than an average murder or an average rape. It is a much more difficult offence.
What will the government do now? It will accelerate the amount of drinking and driving or the use of drugs and driving through these twin laws, Bill C-17 and Bill C-16.
The parliamentary secretary says that we will train the trainers. Is that not interesting. Manitoba and Quebec have the same problem. The government is shutting down RCMP stations in Manitoba. In my home town of Steinbach the RCMP highway patrol was shut down. In Selkirk, Manitoba, the RCMP highway patrol is shut down. Of the 65 highway patrolmen and women in Manitoba, 35 are off highway patrol, leaving long stretches of highway without highway patrol.
Train the trainers: Who will the trainers to train? There are no more RCMP officers left on our roads because of the government's nonsense about things such as the gun registry. It has poured $120 million of money into a gun registry, but it has not hired police officers. The government thinks the bureaucrats will run the justice system. If we do not have police officers out there, our justice system does not work, and the government does not understand that.
Train the trainers: Who will train the trainers? The police will train the trainers. We take more police officers off the street to do the training. Who will pay? It will be the provinces who will pay. In the same way the federal government has downloaded every responsibility in justice on to the provinces, the province will now pay for that training the trainers.
What did the government say? It said that the police would take care of this. It is dumping the problem on the police. It is interesting that in Manitoba the federal government cut the number of highway patrolmen and women to 35. Then it says that the police can take care of this issue.
How will the police officers take care of this issue? They cannot even attend fatals. First responders are out there, not police officers. They deal with gasoline spills, oil spills, bodies on the road, with no police officers available. Train the trainers: we cannot even get police officers on to our street. What nonsense to be telling Canadians that the government is serious about the problem of crime in the streets.
It breaks my heart that 16 years ago the province of Manitoba embarked on an ambitious fight to reduce the amount of drinking and driving on its highways, through administrative suspensions and seizure of motor vehicles. There was no help from the federal government. Certainly the Liberal government has done nothing. The provinces have done it because the federal government does not care about the deaths on our highways.
The federal government has dumped the problem on the police. The administrative suspensions have reduced the number of deaths on the highways. They have reduced the injuries on the highways. I fought to protect those laws in Manitoba. Now those laws have been adopted across Canada. The government is going back on the progress the province made.
The government should immediately withdraw not only this bill, but also Bill C-17 until proper technology is in place. I care about the people in my riding and I care about Canadians even if the Liberals do not. If they do not want to do it, they should step aside. We would get rid of the bill and we would ensure that the technology was in place before we went ahead on something like this.