Justice committee  All I can say is that until the alcohol task committee has had time to do greater study of the ones that are proposed, we can't give you specific data on that question, although we certainly would be able to look at it.

Justice committee  Yes. For the purpose of the record, I'm holding up a device. This happens to be the Alco-Sensor FST. This is the device that the manufacturers suggest.... The passive detection area is on the top. There are three different types of passive detection with this device that they o

Justice committee  You can also use it the other way. You can use it in a passive ambient way and just stick it into the environment, but they suggest otherwise to get the most accurate determination correlating with the actual subject. I'm using the manufacturer's information here. This is not d

Justice committee  At the risk of stepping on the toes of my colleagues from the drugs and driving committee, and since the chair doesn't sit that far from me in my lab and I'm very afraid of her, the answer is no. We don't have any viable technologies available of this nature. My colleagues on dr

Justice committee  The engineering challenges would be huge. The wide variety of chemistries and differences in drugs that can cause impairment make it almost impossible to have anything that will detect passively those types of drugs. What you would have to have is about a million-dollar mass spe

Justice committee  I absolutely agree that it's possible for devices to detect passive alcohol.

Justice committee  Yes, it can be. As I indicated earlier in my testimony, it is a useful tool as long as how they're doing it is properly controlled. There are a lot of variables involved, and I think they have to be very on point with the way they're performing this type of analysis for it to m

Justice committee  As I said in my testimony, there's no doubt that passive detection has been used and that it can be useful in detecting alcohol-impaired drivers.

Justice committee  Asking a scientist if something is worth studying is sort of like giving candy to a baby.

Justice committee  We always want to study things, but whether we have the time and resources to do it is where we have issues. Certainly we have very curious minds on my committee.

Justice committee  Well, if we have the time. We currently have two approved instruments and one approved screening device still on our books that we're doing work on. As I say, it becomes increasingly difficult, given our schedules.

Justice committee  I've always considered the Canadian system to be superior to any in the world, but I may be somewhat biased. My predecessors on this committee certainly have led the way through the years with developing a program in Canada that was seen as being world leading.

Justice committee  I would be surprised at that.

Justice committee  Given the ability for alcohol molecules, which are extremely small, to disseminate into areas where there is no alcohol, the further you go back, the greater the chance of the alcohol dissipating. It would be surprising to me that you could get an accurate result further back tha

Justice committee  It would depend on the volume it's within. Alcohol will distribute or diffuse into the space where there's no.... It goes from an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration. It diffuses very rapidly. The larger the area for diffusion, the greater the chance of t