Mr. Speaker, if I misrepresented the direct statement from the member for London West, I apologize. That was not my intention.
When it is tougher to convict people for drunk driving than it is to convict them of murder, as the former attorney general for Manitoba has told this place, that is a serious problem. That is a red flag that we should all notice about the system. When we find out that there are people who have been convicted of 19 drunk driving offences and they are still behind the wheel, our heads start to spin.
It is a question of odds. How many times do people have to drive drunk before they are caught? How many times are drunk drivers charged before they are convicted? If only 11% of impaired drivers taken to B.C. hospitals were convicted and drivers who have been convicted 16 times are still behind the wheel, that just shows how strong the odds are in a drunk driver's favour.
The government tells us that roughly 71% of drunk drivers were convicted, but if it told us that only 71% of murderers were convicted, the country would enact tougher laws. A 71% conviction rate against people who were charged with drunk driving is not good enough, especially when the biggest single reason why they were not convicted was not that they were innocent, but that they managed to exclude the evidence that proved that they were in fact drunk.
Research has shown that the vast majority of drunk driving trips, 87% of them, are taken by just 5% of drivers. Drunk drivers get behind the wheel of a car 12.5 million times every year in Canada. Only about 70,000 charges of drunk driving are laid per year in these car trips. Of these, 71%, or roughly 49,700 are convicted. That is 49,700 convictions for 12.5 million offences. That is a true conviction rate of roughly 0.4%. Like I said, the odds are very much in a drunk driver's favour.
Bill C-452 is an attempt to swing the balance back. When drunk drivers are pulled over, they are given a blood roadside breathalyzer test and if they have a blood alcohol concentration, BAC, of over 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, or .08, they are charged.
Then at trial the accused typically relies on one of two defences: the Carter defence or the last drink defence. The Carter defence relies on experts to rebut the evidence produced by the breathalyzer. The last drink defence claims that the accused was at a party, quickly chugged three or four drinks and then got into the car to get home before getting over .08 alcohol absorbed in the blood rate.
Bill C-452 aims at dealing with both offences. On the Carter defence, subclause 1(4) of C-452 introduces a new paragraph to the Criminal Code that would require any accused wishing to rebut the breathalyzer evidence to show on a balance of probabilities that: first, the analyses were improperly made; second, the procedures were not followed; third, the equipment malfunctioned; or fourth, the accused consumed alcohol after the alleged offence but before taking the samples.
The legal director for Mothers Against Drunk Driving Canada, Professor Robert Solomon of the law faculty of University of Western Ontario, supports Bill C-452. He writes that requiring the accused to establish on balance of probabilities that the breathalyzer result is inaccurate is no different to requiring him to prove claims that he was not in the driver's seat, as per the existing paragraph 258 (1)(a) of the Criminal Code.
On the last drink defence, subclause 1(2) replaces subparagraph 258(1)(c)(ii) of the Criminal Code with new text increasing the time allowed for the taking of breath or blood samples from an accused to three hours from the current two hours. It would extend the window from which we can catch people for breaking the law. Here, Professor Solomon notes that this change is entirely consistent with the three hour period in which a police officer may demand a sample under subsection 245(3) and describes as inexplicable Parliament's failure to make corresponding changes to that section, as this bill does.
When this bill was first debated on March 24, some Liberal MPs pointed to its shortcomings and proposed to vote against sending it to committee. It is precisely this Liberal focus on the shortcomings of legislation proposed by other parties that is paralleled in law where 29% of persons charged of drunk driving are acquitted, not because of their innocence, but because of artful reliance on technicalities. That is just not good enough.
Bill C-452 is a serious attempt to deal with a serious problem. Drinking and driving is an issue that is a concern for all Canadians. I encourage all members of the House to vote in favour of sending Bill C-452 to committee for examination to strengthen our law, protect families, protect kids, and get in their face and tell drunk drivers that what they are doing will not be tolerated in this new and better Canada.