Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my speech by thanking the member for Richmond—Arthabaska, who sponsored this bill from the Senate. I had the opportunity to sit with him on the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. I also know his history as a school principal. Regardless of the political or ideological disagreements that we may have from time to time, I believe in his sincere efforts to improve public safety and national security.
First, we need to be clear: regardless of our opinion or our approach to eliminating the scourge of impaired driving, we agree in the House that it is something that must be done. It is particularly important and we all recognize that. Statistics show that there is an increase in impaired driving, particularly from marijuana.
For that reason, I support sending the bill to committee so we can hear more about it, because my past experience has not been very convincing. I refer here to another bill that we studied, but I forget the number; I apologize. I refer to the bill regarding random breath testing sponsored by a Conservative member. Many testimonies that we heard during the study of that bill can apply to the discussion of the bill before us today, in addition to other factors that we must consider.
First of all, one of the problems the parliamentary secretary just spoke of is that the bill only mentions the criteria already specified in the Criminal Code relating to alcohol-impaired driving and applies them to drugs. This is about the signs that police officers pick up on. Nothing much would change in that respect.
The maximum allowed blood alcohol concentration in the Criminal Code is .08, and in some provinces, it is set at .05 in matters of traffic safety. There is no mention in the bill, however, of a THC concentration that would allow us to determine how much marijuana a person has actually consumed. That is a major flaw in the bill. Why? Because we would need to rely on a person's behaviour, on what visual and physical cues might be present.
It is problematic because it is clearly a lack of training. We certainly believe that the men and women in uniform who ensure our safety are able to do this work. However, according to the study of the legalization bill and the government’s plan for impaired driving, we know that there is a lot of work to do to offer more training to the men and women in uniform to ensure that they can properly recognize the physical symptoms—if I can use that term—to properly detect cases of drug-impaired driving. That is certainly something that is extremely important in this case.
As well, the bill refers to a saliva test. The problem is that experts tell us that the presence of THC can be detected in bodily fluids several days and even several weeks after the drugs in question have been consumed, particularly marijuana.
The problem with that is that, without a fixed limit set out in the law, we could see situations where the presence of THC could be detected in the blood of someone who had, for example, smoked marijuana several weeks earlier—or several days, maybe; I am not sure about the scientific issues surrounding that, but that is a problem that we will face. So the presence of THC could be detected in someone’s blood, but the concentration would not be high enough to deem someone to be a criminal. For example, the state of Colorado has set a specific limit for the THC levels in people driving while impaired. That is a problem in itself because we could end up in a situation where someone is arrested who is actually not impaired, but who simply used marijuana at some point in the past. That is very concerning.
The other element that I refer to is the ability of these tools to properly measure what we want to measure, namely the level of THC in a person’s body. In the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security’s study of the bill regarding random breath testing, some members raised this question, knowing that the government was preparing a plan for the legalization of marijuana. Several experts, including police representatives, told us that a lot of discussion was still needed and that, at this time, no method was more reliable than another in measuring what we want to measure to ensure that drivers are arrested who are truly impaired.
If we want to solve a problem, we have to do it properly. That is why I want to talk about one of the shortcomings of Bill S-230, which is the same one that was raised in our debate on the bill I mentioned about random breath tests. The issue is that this approach is not comprehensive; it does not address all aspects of the problem. When the committee studied this bill, important stakeholders such as MADD pointed out that it has the same shortcoming.
We have been trying to figure out whether all these tests should be random, and we have talked about the burden that places on the law enforcement agencies responsible for keeping our roads safe, but each of those elements addresses just one aspect of the problem. If we really want to keep our roads safe, we have to look at a broader set of elements.
People often talk about education, for example. Some have suggested that we can figure out the best approach by looking at how things are handled by other countries with more all-encompassing marijuana legislation and some of the U.S. states that have already legalized marijuana.
Washington State and Colorado have rules about exact THC concentrations in blood, which must be measured before an individual can be arrested. Oregon does things differently. There, an officer who stops a driver uses visual cues to determine whether the driver is impaired before proceeding to other tests like the ones the parliamentary secretary listed. Other countries, such as Great Britain, have more specific measures related to blood THC concentration.
Again, I want to congratulate my colleague for sponsoring this bill in the House of Commons. What I said from the outset bears repeating. There is no doubt that every member of the House wants to eradicate this scourge. Too many lives have been lost to impaired driving. We need to do more to raise awareness. We need to give our police forces the tools they need to keep the public safe and do their job properly in order to improve the ever more staggering statistics. However, this needs to be done in a comprehensive manner. We cannot simply rely on meaningless indicators. We must set a very specific and discernible concentration level. That will be even more important in the context of legalizing marijuana.
Finally, I would remind hon. members that we need to have private members' bills from senators or members. Even so, the Liberals have had a hard time with the legalization bill. Even though we are in favour of legalization, the fact remains that the Liberals have botched this process in a number of ways, including when it comes to consulting the provinces. That speaks to the complexity and scope of such a bill. A lot of work remains to be done to ensure that everything is done properly. Nevertheless, I will vote in favour of this bill so that we may study it in committee. I look forward to seeing the end result.
Again, I will vote in favour of the bill to ensure that we can study it in committee, and I look forward to seeing the end result.