SOBERING THOUGHTS
When the federal Liberals unveiled its overhaul of impaired driving legislation in April 2017, alongside its cannabis legalization bill, one of the most immediately surprising changes was that it was to allow police to request breath samples from drivers whenever they wanted — officers didn’t need to suspect the driver was impaired.
Other nations, such as Australia and Ireland, say these powers to randomly breathalyze drivers dramatically reduce impaired driving. That’s a noble objective: In Canada, 1,000 people are killed annually, and another 60,000 injured, according to Mothers Against Drunk Driving. And the Liberals, in justifying random breath testing, claim that 50 per cent of impaired drivers get away scot-free.
On Thursday, the Senate’s legal and constitutional affairs committee voted to remove that provision from the legislation.
During testimony to the House of Commons committee last year, witnesses raised some fairly significant concerns about this provision: in a court system already plagued with delays, wouldn’t police powers designed to catch more people cause even more problems? What about minorities, already more heavily scrutinized by police — wouldn’t they bear the brunt of such a change? And, for that matter, what about Charter of Rights and Freedoms protections against unreasonable search and seizure?
“We had criminal defence lawyers with lengthy careers in this field tell us that these provisions would lead to a decade of charter challenge litigation,” said Conservative Sen. Denise Batters, who moved the amendment.
While the committees heard from other experts who said such a rule would survive a charter challenge — the danger of drunk driving outweighing any civil liberties concerns that random testing raises — there’s little doubt the battles would be long and expensive.
We have little sympathy for those who drink and drive. It’s a tremendously self-centred and anti-social behaviour. The government is right to consider policies that will work to put an end to it.
That said, it’s the job of the Senate to push back against ill-advised legislation. We don’t need to come down, in particular, on the merits of this particular bit of law to recognize that it raises some very thorny questions indeed.
In other words, more debate and study is needed. The negative impacts of such provisions have been well-elucidated, and the government’s defence hasn’t been particularly inspired: Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould once compared breath testing to reaching into the glove box for registration.
Our politicians should strive for some sobriety in re-examining this idea.