Canadians should not be presumed criminals

There are many ways to curb those fools who insist upon getting behind the wheel while drunk or stoned. Treating everybody as a suspected criminal isn’t one of them.

Governments, along with their sidekick police forces, love nothing more than scaring us into giving up hardearned rights by endlessly braying that, “Hey, only the guilty need worry.”

Well, that is disingenuous and dangerous nonsense. Everyone should worry when police are given instruction and accompanying powers to assume guilt and engage in blanket sweeps targeting ordinary citizens who have neither put a foot wrong nor given any remote indication of actual criminality.

And that is exactly what this new law allows, giving Canada’s cops the right to demand a breath sample from any driver they stop, instead of requiring an officer to have reasonable suspicion such a driver had indeed been drinking.

This makes a mockery of the very idea of presumed innocence, a right that required centuries of struggle against the massed and powerful forces of officialdom before it was enshrined in law, yet one which we are supposed to simply shrug and relinquish because it makes the cops’ lives a little easier and catches a few more drunk-driving nitwits.

Of course, to argue this is official overreach of the most dangerous kind invites the usual suspects to blab about how opposing such moves is somehow akin to aiding and abetting the actual crime of driving over the legal limit. That is absolute tosh.

In fact, the police should be doing a lot more than they currently are in Calgary to catch drunk drivers. But that would involve using more manpower and brainpower than simply treating everyone as cattle that can periodically be herded into a suitable roadside pen for testing.

Come on, let’s face it: if you drive at any time other than over the Christmas holiday period or during Stampede, the chances of seeing a Checkstop in Calgary are as rare as high-fives between Mayor Naheed Nenshi and Coun. Jeremy Farkas these days.

So, if we want to curb drunk driving, then we need a lot more Checkstops. We need them at midnight near favourite watering holes, and we might also consider harsher penalties and lowering the legal limit on alcohol allowed in the bloodstream. These changes are all available through legislation and a prioritization of police resources.

Perhaps we also need to stop relying so much upon speed and red-light cameras for policing (or civic fundraising). How many drunks have later received tickets in the mail for such traffic violations and happily paid up because, while they were over the limit that day when their plate was captured, no cop ever arrived at the side window.

If it is OK to toss out civil liberties in order to catch drunk drivers, then why not make a dent in the staggering number of deaths from opioid abuse? Almost as many people currently die in a single month in Alberta from fentanyl overdoses than in an entire year as a result of drunk driving — an annual death toll of 687 compared to 57.

So why not allow cops to march legally and merrily into your home without any warrant or suspicion of wrongdoing simply because they are looking for these dangerous drugs? Pleading you have neither touched nor seen such narcotics isn’t any excuse, not once we allow being breathalyzed because you happen to be next in line. It is simply a matter of degree, so what difference does your solid, upstanding reputation have as protection from a future home search?

Or perhaps they wander into your living room and ask to see a receipt for that TV you were, up to that point, happily watching? Come on: prove it wasn’t stolen.

Think this is poppycock? Come on, this is Canada, you say. That doesn’t happen here.

Really? OK, well, dwell on that for a moment or two while you are wearily waiting in line for your chance to blow.

This makes a mockery of the very idea of presumed innocence, a right that required centuries of struggle against the massed and powerful forces of officialdom before it was enshrined in law