Mr. Speaker, I want to add my voice in support of the bill. Impaired driving is a very serious issue facing our roads, our kids and people in the general public.
To share some statistics, in 2003 alcohol and drugs were involved in over 1,257 fatalities, over 43,000 injuries and 61,000 property damage only crashes involving over 245,174 vehicles. The total financial and social cost of these losses are estimated to be almost $1 billion. That is according to a study that was done in 2003. As well, the Ontario drug survey was done in 2003. It showed that close 20% of kids were driving within an hour after smoking cannabis.
Therefore, the intent of the bill is about making our roads safer and about ensuring we have the deterrence in our system so people are not having a few beers then jumping in their cars, heading home and causing accidents.
Countless organizations, MADD being one of them, are supportive of the bill. They want to ensure we make our streets safer and that we have a national perspective. My province of Manitoba is not talking about .08 any more. It is talking about a blood alcohol level of .05. Therefore, some provincial jurisdictions are getting more aggressive.
The member talked about all the charter challenges and the constitutionality of a number of these issues, but we already have a number of safeguards in our system to ensure that charter rights are not violated. We will be looking at putting in place a new way of helping the police forces standardize their whole system of trying to determine if someone is under influence of alcohol or drugs. They are going to standardize the field sobriety test, which is important. They are going to have drug recognition expert evaluations, which will help our police forces. Then there will be the sampling of all bodily fluids when there is consent to do so.
The charter issues that have been brought forward are really a misdirection in trying to tackle the real issue, which is to make our streets safer and to keep the public safe when they are travelling. I support the bill 100%.