Justice committee  Mr. Chairman, committee members, I am the manager of research and policy at the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, also referred to as CCSA. I'm a behavioural scientist, and over the past 24 years my research has focused almost exclusively on impaired driving issues. With me tod

Justice committee  Absolutely. I'd be happy to. What we're saying is that we want the legislation to insist that impairment is the focus of what we're trying to do here. It's to get impaired drivers off the road. The first section, where there's possession in the vehicle, is something we're oppos

Justice committee  It's important, from our perspective, that the police officer on the road is looking for impaired drivers. It begins with a suspicion. Whether it's driving down the road in an improper fashion, whether it's that when you stop the vehicle you smell alcohol or marijuana, or that yo

Justice committee  I'm sorry, I couldn't hear the first part of that question.

Justice committee  It's of some concern, yes. We have to make sure the officer is looking for impairment.

Justice committee  What the officer is doing, first of all, is looking for suspicion. But what he's actually doing is looking for evidence that could lead to a charge of impaired driving. If he doesn't see it, the person is not going to be charged.

Justice committee  It's the same as with alcohol. What we have done is create a parallel process. When an officer stops a driver, his first thing to look for may be alcohol. All he needs is a suspicion that the driver has consumed alcohol. That leads to the next step. In this particular case, if t

Justice committee  That's right. That's why—

Justice committee  That's why we have asked that the definition of a drug be included in the legislation.

Justice committee  No, that's only in the possession part.

Justice committee  No.

Justice committee  Several eye examinations are included in the field sobriety test and the drug recognition expert program, because they're very highly correlated with levels of blood alcohol and impairment. The most commonly used test is the lateral gaze nystagmus, which is the involuntary jerk

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee members. The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse appreciates the opportunity to address you today to share our views on the issue of impaired driving. As you may know, CCSA is Canada's national non-governmental organization, formed in 1988 by

Justice committee  This has been an issue that has been on the table since I first started working in the impaired-driving field 25 years ago. Even back then, when we looked at the evidence there was a lot of interpretation to what was out there. It was not very clear-cut. Not everyone is impaired

Justice committee  Do we enforce at 100? That's an item for data analysis.