The Star’s view: End this charade now,

How many grieving mothers like Jennifer Neville-Lake will it take to wake Canadians to the persistent, lethal problem of drunk driving? And how long will it be before the courts begin to impose — and uphold — sentences that fully reflect society’s horror at drunk drivers who kill?

Marco Muzzo has been sentenced to 10 years in prison plus a 12-year driving ban in a case that shocked the community. He snuffed out the lives of Neville-Lake’s three children, Daniel, 9, Harrison, 5, and Milly, 2, as well as their grandfather Gary Neville, and badly injured the kids’ grandmother and great-grandmother.

While Superior Court Justice Michelle Fuerst rightly imposed a “tough” sentence by recent standards, it felt inadequate. The Crown had asked for 10 to 12 years. Even the upper range would scarcely have reflected the community’s revulsion and the family’s anguish and loss. The defence asked for eight years. In her reasons for sentencing, Fuerst noted that while impaired driving causing death can result in life in prison, the Ontario Court of Appeal has provided “some guidance” by upholding an eight-year term in a recent case involving multiple deaths.

Muzzo was drunk behind the wheel of his SUV and was speeding last year when he ran a stop sign in Vaughan and plowed into a minivan carrying the family.

As Fuerst put it, Muzzo’s actions “produced a tragedy almost beyond comprehension” that shattered the families and left the public fearful of other drunks on the roads.

It left Jennifer Neville-Lake “listening in vain for my kids to call out my name,” her every waking moment “haunted by what was and what can never be again.” Reacting to the sentence, NevilleLake was reduced to pleading with other drinking drivers to “Please, don’t do that,” as she stood outside the courthouse weeping for her lost children.

Fuerst noted that Parliament expects cases of this sort to be dealt with “severely.” “For as long as Mr. Muzzo has been alive, the courts have warned about the consequences of impaired driving,” she said. “Yet the message escaped him. It is important that it does not escape others.”

In the Star’s view, a heavier sentence would have helped drive home the point.

Some people are getting the message. Impaired driving in Canada has dropped by two-thirds in the past 30 years. But the big dip was from 1985 to 2000. Since then, the gains have been far more modest. Across Canada police laid nearly 75,000 charges in 2014, 15,000 of them in Ontario. And Mothers Against Drunk Driving Canada estimates there are more than 1,250 impairment-related crash deaths a year.

To her credit, Justice Fuerst pushed the bounds as far as she felt she should, with denunciation and deterrence in mind. But the courts should be prepared to get tougher, if that’s what it takes to rein in this scourge.