Justice committee  The current minimum penalty is a fine of $600 for a first offence. Imprisonment the second time for a second offence is 14 days, and it's 90 days for a third or subsequent offence. Those are the existing minimums.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  That's correct.

Justice committee  You'll certainly see the regulation that would allow us to incorporate by reference; you know, the International Association of Chiefs of Police norm 417-3--I'm making that up, obviously--as amended from time to time. So we'd be able to tell you what it looked like then, and if they amended it later, it would come into force by the operation of being adopted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

Justice committee  I would agree that this could happen. Certainly it wouldn't be any kind of secret we'd be pulling off, because we'd have to advise all the police officers in DRE that there has been this change. These changes are in fact proposed. They take anywhere from six months to 18 months, from what I've seen sort of from the outside, to be validated and finally voted on at annual conferences, etc.

Justice committee  I don't want to delay things, but I've just one point: the citizen who's charged is going to have to prove in court that they followed the prescribed steps, etc., and it's going to be what's prescribed at that time. Their lawyer will presumably get access to what the tests were in order to show that they complied with it.

Justice committee  When we deleted this section, we were guided in large measure by the advice we received from our regulation section when we advised them that there is a great deal of DRE material that may already exist under the International Association of Chiefs of Police and that gets amended from time to time when they receive new advice from their medical and scientific panels.

Justice committee  I certainly can't speak for all detachments in the country, but I do know that there are some very busy stations that do have video recording of breathalyzers, which can be very useful in court. They may have videos elsewhere. Parts of these tests take place in a darkened room. I just believe it would cause very serious practical difficulties in stations that have a video set up in one place for one purpose to have to use that particular place for that purpose, for the DRE.

Justice committee  Yes, Mr. Hanger.

Justice committee  As it is currently written, the section stipulates that: (2) If a peace officer has reasonable grounds to suspect that a person has in the preceding three hours had alcohol or a drug in their body while they were operating a motor vehicle or vessel— The driver must meet two criteria: on the one hand, that he drove in the previous three hours and, on the other, that he drove after having consumed alcohol or a drug.

Justice committee  If I may, Mr. Hanger, obviously the first improvement in this is that we have the three hours instead of having the current law, that it's the person while operating. Under what we now propose, the police officer would have, in my view, a clear reason to believe that the person has alcohol in their body.

Justice committee  You are correct, but the person here would be capable of providing a sample on a breathalyzer.

Justice committee  The warrant only applies, yes--

Justice committee  If I may, Mr. Chairman.

Justice committee  The level in the law, even as it exists today, which we are trying to amend in this bill, however it may come out of this committee, is a suspicion of alcohol in the body; it is not a suspicion of being impaired. It is only to get you to the approved screening device, which, if you fail it, will then provide the reasonable and probable grounds to make the other demand, assuming you can put the person behind the wheel, because you have to have proof, a reasonable suspicion of driving while over 0.08.