Justice committee  I'd identify a serious concern. Notwithstanding the accuracy of DRE testing, there has to be a procedure in place to do it. What we heard from Mr. Solomon earlier is that police are reluctant to lay impaired charges because the defences take so long and they have to spend so much

Justice committee  No, that's a totally different question. You asked me about linkages, causal linkages, and scientific testing.

Justice committee  No, I think—

Justice committee  There is no scientific way to make a causal link between the presence of, for instance, marijuana or other drugs in one's system and the issue of impairment.

Justice committee  You certainly can take drugs and be impaired by those drugs. The problem is that drug testing only tells you if you have the drugs in your system. It doesn't tell you if you're impaired. If you smoked marijuana yesterday, you will test positive for the presence of marijuana in yo

Justice committee  Certainly, but the problem is—and I think it's one of the major problems we've been dealing with all morning—is that there's this assumption of infallibility. It was said, I think by Mr. Solomon, that if you fail the standardized field sobriety test, you're impaired. Well that's

Justice committee  That's right.

Justice committee  No, I don't think it is. What happens is that we now have the idea that we're going to subject people to highly invasive, privacy-intrusive drug tests on the basis of an assumption, first, that there's some level of at least certainty that the person might have drugs in their sys

Justice committee  I'm well aware of this government's concern with the issue of drugs and its attempts to combat them, but my numbers came from the legislative summary.

Justice committee  The Oregon study actually allowed officers to choose two categories of drugs, so the failure rate is only reflected if they were wrong on both.

Justice committee  But the question of impairment isn't contemplated in the study at all. It's a question about whether the test was able to tell whether or not the drug was in the system. The question of impairment is a wholly different question from the question of whether or not you have the pre

Justice committee  I have one quick example. We have about 1,700 people in this country who are authorized to use marijuana for medical purposes. There are about 200,000 or 300,000 more who haven't been able to navigate the federal government's system. These people will test positive for the prese

Justice committee  Thank you for your question. The short answer to your question is no. Removing the possession provision doesn't make the bill acceptable, for a few reasons. As Mr. Brayford has pointed out with respect to the evidentiary restrictions, people have the right to defend criminal ch

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of committee. My name is Kirk Tousaw, and I'm from the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. The association is the oldest and most active defender of civil liberties in the country, and we thank you for the opportunity to make some remarks o