JURI Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON JUSTICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA JUSTICE ET DES DROITS DE LA PERSONNE

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, March 4, 1999

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[English]

The Chair (Mr. John Maloney (Erie—Lincoln, Lib.)): I'd like to convene the meeting this morning and welcome our witnesses: from Zero Tolerance, Mr. Kenneth Roffel; from the Giroux-Talbot family, Marjolaine Giroux and Lévis Talbot; and three individuals, Douglas Abernethy—excuse me, but I would ask the photographer if he could finish up and depart, thank you, sir—

Mr. Randy White (Langley—Abbotsford, Ref.): Mr. Chairman, are there no government members here?

The Chair: All we need is three to proceed. Most of our government members are on the CCR review, it would appear.

As I was saying, we also have individual presentations from Mr. Doug Abernethy, Ms. Sharleen Verhulst and Ms. Jennifer Dickson. I understand that the Giroux-Talbot family has a brief in French only and that Sharleen Verhulst and Jennifer Dickson have a brief in English only. What are the wishes of the committee? Do you wish to have these distributed, subject only to being translated?

An hon. member: That would be fine.

The Chair: Would that be the consensus?

Mr. Randy White: Agreed.

The Chair: Madam Clerk, could we make sure those get distributed? Thank you.

Mr. Roffel, I understand that you have an overhead. I suggest that you be the last witness. We will hear the other groups first. Is that okay?

Mr. Kenneth William Roffel (Representative, Zero Tolerance): That's fine, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Okay. Perhaps we could start with the Giroux-Talbot family.

Would you like to make your presentation now, Mr. Talbot?

Mr. Lévis Talbot (Representative, Giroux-Talbot Family): Right now? Is it possible, please, to distribute our brief?

The Chair: Yes, they're doing that right now. Thank you.

You may sit down if you like, Mrs. Giroux.

[Translation]

Ms. Marjolaine Giroux (Representing the Giroux-Talbot Family): Good morning, Mr. Chairman, honourable members, ladies and gentlemen.

We are here today to make our leaders more aware of the problems of drinking and driving and hit and run with the hope that they'll put these matters high on the list of their priorities.

The reason we've undertaken this is because we are parents, like many others, who lost a child in circumstances that will only be repeated time after time as long we haven't found the proper solution to the serious problem of impaired driving.

On July 11, 1998, in Saint-Henri-de-Lévis, a tragic accident affected our family. Because of a mechanical breakdown our son Nicolas, aged 16, decided not to leave his ATT in the path he usually used and went over to a friend's place to store it, not too far in the village.

• 0945

To get there, he had to walk along the main road. While pushing his ATT along, he was mortally hit by a drunken driver who then fled the scene. The impact was so hard that the car lost a tire and that allowed the police officers to follow the trail that the wheel left on the pavement to the driver's home, two kilometres further on.

Making $5,000 bail and defended by a good lawyer, this hit- and-runner was on the road two weeks later awaiting judgment which, if everything goes smoothly, won't happen for another year at least.

As a result of this event and many other similar cases we realized the extent to which the laws governing drunk driving are essentially tolerant despite all the efforts made by our governments to fight this scourge. We therefore decided to ask the various authorities in Quebec, by way of a petition, to make certain provisions now in the Civil Code more stringent. In the petition, we request that the driver's licence be suspended on the spot until judgment is passed and that all vehicles licenced in the offender's name be seized for the whole period the licence is suspended.

The object of these changes is to protect our fellow citizens from the serious, distressing and irreparable consequences visited on them by accidents caused by impaired driving.

In the four months after our petition was launched, we gathered 140,600 signatures, 60,000 of which were gathered personally by ourselves, our families and our friends. This direct contact with the population allowed us to see that over 90% of the people had had enough of watching funeral processions for victims of drunk driving. They supported our request and many of them made suggestions because they found ours were not drastic enough.

Here are the ones we heard most often: the death penalty or a life term, which we didn't pass on because we found that was really very drastic; withdrawal of the driver's licence for life; lifetime withdrawal of the privilege to own any vehicle; withdrawal for life of the licence of anyone found guilty of a hit and run; zero per cent alcohol tolerance for any driver at the wheel; voluntary laying of information by any citizen against anyone drunk at the wheel of a vehicle; mandatory, permanent installation of a breath- analyzer in the vehicle of anyone caught impaired; year-long operation Red Nose; mandatory period of helping the handicapped in a rehabilitation centre for reckless drivers caught drinking and driving; increased police presence in rural areas; identification of the vehicle of anyone caught drinking and driving by putting a fluorescent sticker on the car licence which would allow police officers to supervise offenders more easily; use of the Denver boot to reduce storage costs; tiered penalties based on blood alcohol levels.

We must act fast because every five hours another Canadian is killed because of drunk driving. That Canadian could very well be one of your children, your relatives or your friends.

According to statistics, alcohol is responsible for the death of over five Canadians a day and 300 injuries, in other words one death every five hours and one injury every five minutes which translates into 1,700 dead Canadians and 100,000 injured every year.

Accidents caused by impaired drivers represent losses of something like 7 billion dollars in lost productivity, policing costs and direct health costs.

As its name indicates, the driver's permit is a permission, a privilege that is granted. To get that licence, you must pass exams and meet a certain number of criteria for eligibility just as the restaurant owner must meet certain requirements like posting prices and running a clean kitchen. If the restaurant doesn't post its prices, a fine is imposed. If the establishment is so unhealthy as to endanger the health of the clientele, the licence is withdrawn on the spot. The same should apply for any driver endangering his life or that of his passengers by driving a vehicle under the influence either of alcohol or other drugs.

Anyone driving drunk is giving proof positive that he doesn't meet the eligibility criteria and that the permission he was given should be withdrawn on the spot.

Although suspension of the driver's permit is effective, SAAQ statistics show that 75% of offenders continue to drive without their licence and scoff at the law. When a child messes up a wall with crayons, it is often not enough just to tell the child not to use crayons in that way. The most effective way to do is to take them away until the child understands that these wonderful instruments should not be used to damage someone else's property. The child is given back the crayons only when he's reasonable and responsible enough to use them appropriately.

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The same goes for a driver misusing his vehicle. He runs the risk of causing material damage or even harming his fellow citizens. Suspending the licence isn't enough to prevent most offenders driving their vehicles which means that seizure seems a far more effective deterrent.

We actually noticed that the clause in our petition that made people hesitate most before signing was the one concerning the seizure of the vehicle. The owner of the vehicle must use it properly because an automobile can easily become a dangerous weapon.

Some people refused to sign the petition because they thought a stiffening of the legislation would have a perverse effect on hit and runs. If you go through the legislation, you'll quickly see that those people aren't necessarily wrong.

Actually, in the case of an accident involving death or bodily harm, when a party is found guilty of a hit and run, he's liable to a maximum jail sentence of five years but if he's drunk and stays there to help the injured, then he's liable to up to a maximum of 14 years. It's easy to see how our legislation encourages the lack of responsibility and social consciousness.

Hit and run, as we have just described it, is a criminal act and doubly so. In actual fact, besides having injured or killed one or several persons, the party responsible runs away without showing any care for the needs of the people he has injured and who will perhaps die although the person running away might have been able to help them. So it is fitting that leaving the scene of an accident is considered to be a criminal act in Canada. However, we believe that in future it should be treated in the same way as a refusal to take a breathalyser test.

The sanction for anyone leaving the scene of an accident causing death or bodily harm should be equal to or higher than the maximum sanction applied to anyone driving impaired.

We recommend that Justice Canada review the legislation on leaving the scene and impaired driving to better protect Canadian citizens.

The measures we consider most effective to decrease bodily harm are the following:

- On-the-spot suspension of the offender's licence for a determinate period based on the blood alcohol level of the offender. During the suspension, the offender must undertake rehabilitation at his own expense to void repeating. After the period of suspension, the offender must undergo a driver's test and pay for the costs. The cost of the licence should also be increased to take into account the fact that this person is more of a risk.

- On-the-sport seizure of the vehicle and impoundment, either in a pound or, preferably, in the offender's own yard with a Denver boot for the whole period the licence is suspended. The costs for the pound or the Denver boot are to be paid by the offender as well as registration costs.

- Jail for variable periods based on the offender's blood alcohol concentration. These periods should vary from between two days and three months firm. We don't want to overpopulate our jails. Jail should be used in moderation, but should be used nevertheless for people to understand that impaired driving is a criminal offence. It has been shown that jail is a deterrent as long as the term does not exceed two years. For hit and run, the maximum sentence should apply. For each repeat offence, the sentence should be double the previous one.

In making this presentation, we hope our country's leaders will once again focus their attention on this national scourge and take the time to consider the proposals the people of Canada are making. Any solution will have to be a true deterrent: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure and for some things there is no cure. The decision to drink may be a personal matter, but to drive after drinking is a matter for society.

On our own behalf, on behalf of our family and our fellow citizens, we thank you for having heard us and our suggestions.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Giroux.

[English]

Jennifer and Sharleen, could you proceed now?

Ms. Sharleen Verhulst (Individual Presentation): Jennifer and I, in the last four years, have put a lot of effort into decreasing impaired driving. With the wealth of knowledge between the two of us, we've come across a few solutions. We're honoured to share them with the group that's committed to improving road safety in Canada.

I'll just tell you a little bit about Jennifer. She is the president of Drinking Driving CounterAttack for the University of British Columbia. In that capacity, Jennifer basically works tirelessly at reducing impaired driving in Vancouver, particularly among students.

As for myself, I'm a public speaker. I am promoted by the Insurance Corporation of B.C. I travel around B.C. and speak about impaired driving, to students in particular. Actually, I receive a lot of good feedback from students, which we've put in our proposal.

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I'm also the coordinator for the Maple Ridge-Pitt Meadows RCMP. In that capacity, I've seen a lot of things in terms of enforcement issues around impaired driving, so the first three recommendations in our proposal outline some of the difficulties that have been encountered in terms of enforcement.

Jen and I feel that together we represent three components in the community. We represent youth a great deal because of the fact that we deal with students and youth across the province. Also, a lot of this has to do with enforcement, and for the last four years I've worked with different RCMP departments and police departments throughout B.C. And as someone who has lost somebody to impaired driving—I lost my twin sister in 1995—I feel that a lot of our proposal expresses the sentiments of victims across Canada who have also lost somebody to impaired driving. Actually, paper-clipped to the last page of our proposal is a picture of Cindy. You all have that. I won't dwell on it, though.

Because Jen and I feel like we, in combination, uniquely represent the everyday community, we see impaired driving as a multi-faceted problem, really, and that's why we've put together a multi-strategy solution. I'll go through it step by step.

In terms of overwhelming police case files and court backlogs, we looked a lot at Criminal Code wording issues. We found that the way in which a lot of the things in the Criminal Code are worded is creating what we call loopholes as well as a lot of complexity in enforcement. We have made recommendations in terms of that.

In terms of the rest of society, we see that a lot of the answer lies in changing public perception. In changing public perception, there's always this debate about whether public perception influences legislation or legislation influences public perception. Today, our hope is that legislation influences public perception and that in the instances of tougher legislation we're going to have a public that says this is wrong, that they're not going to tolerate it any more and that it's not going to happen. That's our goal in terms of tougher penalties and things like that.

We want to offer Canadians a greater realization: that impaired driving is a very serious offence, that it's deadly and that it shouldn't be tolerated. That was our goal in what we put in here.

With enforcement issues, in my experience with the police, there is a lot of complexity. It has led to decreased charges and court backlogs. One of our recommendations is an implied consent clause in the Criminal Code, which would basically say that you're not compelled to drive; however, if you do choose to drive, the police have the right to breathalyse you. We don't foresee police pulling people over for no reason all the time and breathalysing them—because of sparse police resources—but this relieves the really heavy burden of having that preponderance of evidence to justify breathalysing somebody. From what I've seen, that's led to a lot of charges being stayed and things like that. A person was obviously drunk and the police weren't able to justify why the person was breathalysed.

The other thing in terms of enforcement was an increased time limit for breath samples. From what I've seen with police officers, the accused has a lot of leeway in game-playing, in changing their lawyer and changing this and changing that. Once the two-hour timeline has gone by, in order to get a conviction, they have to bring an expert into court to say what the breathalyser result would have been three hours ago, for example, and most of the rural areas actually never bring in an expert. The police really have said to us that they'd like the two hours increased to four hours.

We also talked a bit about the disclosure process. We were alarmed to find that so many cases were thrown out of court because of a tiny wording change or a tiny error or something left off an analyst's certificate. Those kinds of small things are not infringing the rights of the accused and are not in any way negative, yet cases are being thrown out for that. We've outlined that.

Our other component was the blood-alcohol level. We've done a lot of research on the fact that we feel .08 is just way too high. In doing that, we researched blood-alcohol content levels in other countries. We would like to see .02. We completely support Ken Roffel on zero tolerance. We asked for .02 because we were able to sort of justify that by our own means, but we are very supportive of Ken. In Sweden and Japan, it's .02. We researched that.

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We also looked at licensing programs for new drivers, which tend to have zero tolerance limits. We looked at medical and legal reports and quoted them in our proposal with respect to the fact that 50% of the population is actually impaired at .04—so we're not sure why the limit is .08. We looked at opinion surveys of the public and the police.

Jennifer and I actually conducted our own experiment at the Maple Ridge RCMP detachment. We wanted to know how much .08 was and how much .02 was. In a controlled environment, Jennifer and I actually did a drinking experiment at the detachment and found that we were still blowing a “pass” when we couldn't get out of our chairs. That was alarming to us because we were so incapacitated, yet the law says that we could have driven. We can discuss that more later.

In terms of passengers, one of the things that we asked for that doesn't tend to really be a discussion, but.... A lot of passengers who get into vehicles with impaired drivers are themselves killed or injured. To protect those people, we actually want to see a passenger with an impaired driver be chargeable as party to an offence. We feel they are party to an offence. We feel that this would accomplish three goals.

First and foremost, it would reduce deaths and injuries of people who are getting into the car with an impaired driver. We feel that it's also going to discourage the principal offenders themselves by virtue of the fact that nobody is getting into the car with them and nobody is encouraging them because they're drunk and they shouldn't be driving; they find themselves in the car alone. We're hoping that they'll select the same alternate mode of transportation that their unwilling passengers have. Third, this would reflect the seriousness of the offence. We feel that saying you're going to be party to an offence if you actually even get in the car with an impaired driver is really going to reflect how serious impaired driving is and how much of a social impact it has on our country.

Our fourth component was sentencing requirements. It has already been mentioned that every five hours and twenty minutes in Canada one person dies and that every five minutes there's an injury, and this happens because individuals choose to drink and drive. It's a cognitive decision. Yet, despite the number of tragedies, the average sentence is zero to three years. In fact, in B.C., the average is eighteen months. Some of the sentences that have been given out in the past little while for impaired driving causing death have been in the six- to eight-year range. That tends to be less than 1% of the sentences in Canada.

But we feel that because that's positive, because it's moving in the right direction, we'd really like to perpetuate that by asking for a seven-year minimum on impaired driving causing death, and we'd like to see a two-year minimum on impaired driving causing bodily harm.

With respect to the way in which we came up with seven years and two years, we looked at codified law that set out minimums and maximums related to the offence. We also looked at Bill C-201, the bill that was proposed last year, which asked for a seven-year minimum. There was huge public support for that. We're also asking for a maximum of life on impaired driving causing death. The reason we asked for it is that criminal negligence causing death by using a firearm has a maximum of life and we really view an vehicle driven by an impaired driver as a weapon, just like a firearm. That's how we've justified that.

In terms of the seriousness of the offence, we related the seriousness of the offence to the tragedy of the loss. As someone who has lost somebody to impaired driving.... I don't want to dwell on this, because I want to dwell on positive change, but the sort of person we're losing is a person like Cindy, my twin sister. At the age of 18 she sponsored a foster child in Haiti and all this volunteer work and all these wonderful things. The saddest part about this is that this didn't just happen to me. This happens to Canadians all the time. It has happened to Ken. When the judge convicted the man who killed my sister, he actually stood up in the courtroom and said, “What greatness lost.” Who knows what she would have gone on to accomplish? His name was Judge William Stewart and that was one of the things he said. He listened to a whole bunch of stories about Cindy.

He actually did give a sentence in the six- to eight-year range. It really makes me think of the seriousness of the offence and how what's laid out in the Criminal Code isn't reflecting that. What I saw in that courtroom reflected the seriousness of the offence. What I see in the Criminal Code doesn't.

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This is who we're losing: people like Cindy.

One of the other things is a wording thing. A lot of times people will say to me that they've heard that my sister was killed in a car accident. I always feel the need to correct them, because I don't see impaired driving as an accident. I see it as 100% avoidable. I see it as 100% preventable. I don't see any reason for somebody to not have a safe ride home. If they haven't planned a safe ride home before they leave their house, the very simple answer is to not drink.

One of the things I always correct with people is that I call it a car crash or a car collision, not a car accident. I'm tempted to even ask for the word “accident” to be changed in the Criminal Code with respect to impaired driving. It sounds like a semantics thing, but I think society really views things in terms of labelling. When we call it things like “impaired driving causing death” instead.... What they call it in the States is “vehicular homicide”. Now that sounds really serious. That sounds like the offence that it is. Yet in Canada, we call it an “accident”. It's a wording issue, but it's something that I feel is important.

There's another thing Jennifer and I have taken on. We understand that impaired driving is not just a legislative issue, not just an enforcement issue and not just something that we're saying legislation is going to solve. Knowing that, one of the things we've done is to travel the province of B.C.—and we do want to go further than our own province—to talk to students and to police officers and ask them, after I have made my presentation to them, to promise that they'll do just one thing to combat impaired driving. We just ask them to write down one thing.

What we have—I've brought them all—are 2,000 promises from people who have promised to do one thing to combat impaired driving. These are from all the people in B.C. who have done this. Some of these are heartfelt, some of these are great and some of them actually talk about tougher legislation, about how that's what they want to see.

Our goal in doing this is to mobilize all Canadians to take ownership of the problem. We want to mobilize everybody to take it seriously. We think a great stride to start that with would be legislation. It would be just wonderful for us to be able to say that the government sees that this is a huge problem and that these are the changes government has made. We feel that would help us to tell the public that they need to take it seriously as well and that they need to stop doing it—because it's not being taken seriously and it's happening too much. This is one of the things that we've done. Our personal goal is to continue this.

Jennifer and I really want to thank everybody here for the opportunity to be able to express this and to let you know that this is how we feel about impaired driving. We've outlined everything in more detail in the proposal. We've talked about where we came up with our recommendations, about the case law and the stats that we looked at.

Having said that, I thank you very much for giving us this opportunity.

The Chair: Thank you, Sharleen. We very much appreciate your presentation and we appreciate how difficult it may have been for you to give it.

Mr. Roffel.

Mr. Ken Roffel: Mr. Chairman, may I take a moment?

The Chair: Mr. Abernethy, would you go first?

Mr. Doug Abernethy (Individual Presentation): Drunk drivers have unleashed a toll of devastation on the roads in Canada. Drunk driving causes more deaths and injuries than all murders and robberies combined.

An example of this is that in 1991 charges laid under the Criminal Code of Canada totalled 734,700. Traffic charges were the highest percentage of this total. Drunk driving incidents reported by the police in 1991 totalled 132,377, or 61% of all Criminal Code traffic incidents. In 1991, drinking and driving was a contributing factor in 1,800 motor vehicle deaths and 60,000 injuries, costing society $20 billion for hospitalization, prison time, fines, job loss and rehabilitation programs.

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A National Highway Traffic Safety Association study showed that a driver would be able to drive drunk between 200 and 2,000 times before being picked up just once and that the majority of those being arrested for driving drunk have been doing it four or five times a week for several years before being arrested.

Alcohol assessments of first-time offenders show that 80% or more of those convicted of drunk driving were alcoholics or problem drinkers. This reinforces my view that it is a myth that the first-time offender is a social drinker who made a mistake. The threat of legal and other sanctions does deter most people—particularly socially responsible people—from drinking and driving.

However, many people still drink and drive, so the deterrent effect must be enhanced. The hard-core repeat offender must become a priority in dealing with the problem of impaired driving in Canada.

I've made four recommendations to you in my brief, of which you have a copy, and I would ask you to seriously consider them.

Just by way of background, I woke up in a hospital trauma unit and was told that my 15-year-old brother, who was a passenger in my vehicle, was dead. He was killed by a drunk driver who hit us head-on. The driver's blood-alcohol concentration was double the legal limit. This crash happened 17 years ago, and we're still trying to deal with drunk drivers today.

Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. I appreciate your comments this morning.

Mr. Roffel.

Mr. Kenneth Roffel: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. May I take a moment to put up this overhead? Thank you.

Honourable chairperson and members of the committee, my name is Kenneth William Roffel. I reside in Langley, British Columbia, with my wife, Eileen, and two sons, Robert and Christopher.

On March 13, 1996, a drunk driver with a blood-alcohol level double the legal limit killed my oldest son, Mark, who was 23. The driver had been involved in an alcohol-related accident earlier that same day and was allowed to go home, where he drank more alcohol and went out driving again that evening. At 8.30, the driver went through a stop sign at an estimated 150 kilometres per hour and killed my son, Mark, instantly.

After we laid Mark's body to rest, I began looking at the current sections of the Criminal Code dealing with drinking and driving. The current limit of .08 blood-alcohol concentration was the main focus of my research.

What is .08 and how do you know when you have reached that level? Furthermore, how does someone drinking alcohol know what their blood-alcohol level is at any given time? I wanted to find out if I was the only Canadian who had no idea, when drinking, if I was legally safe or impaired as defined in the Criminal Code.

I worked with a local research group and then retained them to conduct a survey of Canadians asking what they believed was the level of alcohol a drinker needed to consume in order to have a blood-alcohol level of .08. This showed incredible results. Over 68% of Canadians have no idea how much alcohol to drink—in any form of beverage—in order to get a blood sample to show .05 or .08. We heard everything from three to four beers an hour to three glasses of wine an hour. Some of the respondents wondered if a bottle of beer or a pint of beer had the same alcohol level. A large percentage did not know whether those three glasses of wine with 7% alcohol or 11% alcohol made any difference.

The survey was based on 750 Canadians who were asked a variety of questions on alcohol and driving. I will share the entire survey with you later in my presentation.

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In my guest interviews on radio, callers expressed their support for amending the Criminal Code to zero tolerance. There is a new attitude on the streets here in Canada. On CFRB Radio in Toronto we arrived with our zero tolerance campaign and the radio station broadcast it all day, asking their listeners to stop by and sign the zero tolerance petition. I was a guest of the Charles Adler morning show, and every caller supported zero tolerance. From Vancouver to Newfoundland, Canadians have signed the zero tolerance petition.

The research showed that a change amending the current Criminal Code sections 253, 254 and 255 would make Canada a safer country and would also be supported by an overwhelming majority of Canadians, as demonstrated to the House of Commons in our signatures asking for that change.

On September 1, 1996, I began talking to Canadians about signing the zero tolerance petition and then went across Canada, stopping in cities of all sizes and asking for signatures. On April 27, 1998, we went across Canada and received overwhelming support from every city, town and village we visited with the campaign. Local media were aware of our trip, gave us many hours and devoted air time and print space to the zero tolerance campaign.

Supported with the research that we had done, I knew that the support would be there and that Canadians would sign the zero tolerance petition. On Monday, May 11, 1998, I presented a very large number of signed petitions to the House of Commons. At 3 o'clock that afternoon our local member of Parliament, Randy White, presented them to the House of Commons. Since that historic date I have continued to collect signatures.

Our petition is asking the House of Commons to amend the current Criminal Code blood-alcohol concentration of .08 and make the new limit zero for all ages. The petition also asks for current penalties to include minimum jail times for the first, second and third offences, all based on summary conviction. Our petition asks that drunk drivers be taken off the roads immediately to then face prosecution of additional charges as laid by the Crown.

The law failed my son. Zero tolerance will save lives. I would like to give my full presentation to you, which shows the results of two and a half years of talking with Canadians, listening to stories of hundreds of other tragedies and broken lives caused by impaired drivers and then getting their support.

Please remember that in the public sector as well as in the private sector there are many industries that have adopted a zero tolerance attitude. I'll name a few. There are the airlines, where pilots are not allowed to drink 24 hours prior to takeoff. I often ask people how they would like to get on an airplane with a pilot who has a blood-alcohol level of .05 or .08. Health-care workers, police officers and many others have a zero tolerance attitude, yet we allow drivers to get behind the wheels of their vehicles, most not knowing what their blood-alcohol levels are, and then begin heading into the streets to endanger lives.

Are the current laws fair? The answer is no. When a drinker begins to consume alcohol, how does he measure his blood-alcohol level? Let's use driving a car as an example of a law that is considered fair. As you leave this room today, some of you will drive. As you are going down the road, you'll see that the posted speed is 60 kilometres per hour. To check if you're driving at the legal speed, all you do is glance down at the speedometer, which tells you that you're doing the right speed. If you choose to do 80 kilometres an hour and a policeman stops you, you get a ticket. I believe that's a level playing field. By choosing to drive over the limit, you are given a fine or possibly a speeding ticket.

But drinking drivers have no way of knowing what their blood-alcohol levels are when stopped by the police. The officer approaches the car, smells the alcohol and asks if they've been drinking and how much. Most respond with what they believe will be the correct answer, but the truth is that drinking drivers have no idea how close to or how far under the limit they are. The policeman uses a simple breath device or may request the blood-alcohol sample. Clearly, this simple illustration points to the unfairness of the current code. The law with .08 is too much in favour of the law, not Canadians. When you're drinking, you have no way of knowing what your blood-alcohol level is.

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If you'll turn to the orange section in my presentation, you'll see that we've identified the right target as .00. Legislating a zero tolerance threshold for drunk driving is politically correct, and the real target must also include the repeat offender by keeping these killers off the road. The repeat offender knows that the current law allows a blood-alcohol level of .08 and he also thinks that having four or five beers keeps him under the limit.

The one-size-fits-all blood-alcohol standard, whether it's .08 or .05, fails to account for the myriad variables involved in the particular instances of each person's drinking. One's outlook on life and, by extension, one's competence to drive after two or three beers enjoyed over a meal with friends is vastly different from having pounded back two or three beers while plotting how to murder one's spouse. The bare numbers don't show that.

Perhaps the best point in my presentation to each of the committee members is this, as is shown on the overhead: how do you know what your limit is while consuming alcoholic beverages and how do you know when you have reached that .08 blood-alcohol limit?

Turning to the purple tab in my presentation, the summary, Mr. Chairman, my recommendation is my entire presentation. In my presentation, I've tried to demonstrate that the effects of alcohol, after one drink or a couple of drinks, impair driving judgment. It begins at a blood-alcohol concentration level of .05 or even lower. Serious driving impairment occurs at .08. Drivers aged 16 to 24 have the highest rate of alcohol-related fatal crashes per mile driven, and these young drivers have less driving experience than older drivers.

With biological differences among humans regarding alcohol influence and alcohol tolerances, it makes it virtually impossible to specify any “safe” level of drinking and driving. We are different in size and weight, and it is too impossible to determine a safe blood-alcohol level for anyone to consider drinking and driving.

In each of the provinces and territories we have tried countless ways of discouraging drinking drivers from exceeding the limits. Public education, fines, jail time, treatment programs and other methods have failed to work. Why? Because many first-time and repeat offenders know that the Criminal Code allows a blood alcohol level of .08.

From all the data collected from around the world, we see that when the allowable limits are reduced, so is the number of lives lost. There is also a decline in bodily injuries. We have seen that in some states in the United States, death by alcohol is no longer the leading cause of death for younger drivers. Thirty-seven of the fifty states have zero tolerance drinking and driving for those under 21. Speed and lack of driving experience is by far the number one cause of death among the 16- to 21-year-olds.

It would appear that by allowing those over 21 years of age a limit or a blood-alcohol concentration, with drinking experiences you become a better driver. That's like saying you actually drive better because you have more drinking experience. In some parts of Canada, we see that men aged 35-54 are the leading cause of alcohol crashes, and the data even shows that these so-called experienced drivers have faced up to 12 drinking-and-driving charges over the current legal limit of .08.

During my zero tolerance campaign, I had the opportunity of meeting one of the research scientists who worked on a project for the House of Commons in 1967. He gave me part of the data that was presented to the House. Two thousand volunteers were each given four glasses of beer. Fifty-two per cent of the volunteers reached .08 and the remaining volunteers showed levels as high as .30 after having consumed four glasses of beer in just one hour. The test showed that 52% of the volunteers' blood-alcohol levels rose quickly and that the remaining 48% showed blood-alcohol levels of .08 at the end of the test. This one piece of evidence convinced the researchers that we all react differently when consuming alcohol and that it would be dangerous to allow any level of impairment in the use of an automobile.

I know that zero tolerance will save lives, and each week I have seen the support for it when talking with Canadians about making our roads safer. It's not rocket science. This is about protecting our children and our families. Drinking drivers take away our choices.

• 1025

With all the events going on in our daily lives, we need to be protected from motorists who think they know what their blood-alcohol levels are. Most Canadians are shocked at the amount of alcohol you need to consume to reach a blood level of .08. When you realize that in some individuals that amount is four average-sized drinks or four glasses of beer in one hour, many Canadians are horrified to think that those individuals are going to drive.

Amending sections 253, 254 and 255 of the Criminal Code by eliminating the .08 and making it .00 will make the law very clear. All Canadians and new Canadians will understand. We are also asking for a minimum seven days in jail for a first offence, fourteen days for a second offence and ninety days for a third offence, all including summary convictions.

We've tried increasing fines, increasing insurance premiums, roadside suspensions, impounding vehicles and treatment for the more serious offenders. Let's concentrate the punishment on the individual rather than on his property. Our research also showed that many Canadians feel that the punishment should include minimum jail time and that with proper public awareness many Canadians would leave the keys at home and arrange alternate transportation.

Paying a $300 fine and getting back on the road to drive has not prevented deaths or injuries among first-time offenders or repeat offenders who manage to convince the courts that their jobs are more important, such that they serve their time on weekends. Again, the research shows that the attitude toward this has changed too. Our petition asks for minimum jail time.

Several Canadians have asked me if a couple of drinks would be acceptable. My response is this: if every Canadian had just a couple of drinks and could see exactly what their blood-alcohol level was, then I would not be out here talking about zero tolerance and asking you, this committee, to recommend changes to the Criminal Code.

Finally, Mr. Chairman and committee members, as with anything new, we must learn to expand our paradigms, to begin thinking outside of the box. We must learn to extend our thinking beyond our current belief system and see that by amending the Criminal Code the results will quickly show that the decision to embrace the new attitude toward drinking and driving will save lives of and injuries to innocent victims. We can put a stop to the four lives that are lost to drinking drivers on the average day here in Canada.

Thank you for allowing me to make my presentation on zero tolerance to each of you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Roffel.

Seven-minute rounds, beginning with Mr. Harris.

Mr. Richard M. Harris (Prince George—Bulkley Valley, Ref.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to thank the witnesses for their presentations. I know that it is difficult, as always, for you to appear here today.

There are four comments I want to make and then I want to ask a general question. In my opinion, you each touched on things in your presentations that bear repeating.

Madam Giroux and Mr. Talbot talked about the unfairness in the sentencing and the court system as it happened in their lives.

Mr. Abernethy reminded us that although there are 132,000 charges in Canada every year for impaired driving—I think that's the number—it in fact takes about 16 million offences to get those 132,000 charges. In other words, we cannot imagine the danger that our society is in because of the offences of impaired driving that are not caught.

Mr. Roffel, you brought home a point that we tried to make yesterday. How can you call yourself a responsible drinker if you have one or two drinks or any drinks at all and get into your car and drive without having some absolute knowledge of what your impairment level is and whether you are impaired in terms of driving? The example you gave of looking at the speedometer is probably the best example I've heard. You can tell immediately. But if you have one drink, two drinks or three drinks, how do you know what your impairment level is?

• 1030

Jennifer and Sharleen, you brought up a point—it is just one of your many excellent points—that I've heard here before, and that is, the implied consent law: when you accept your driver's licence you are giving implied consent to the police forces to check you to see whether you're impaired.

My general question is this: given the incredible public support to crack down on the tragedies, the carnage, on our highways, which is overwhelming—I know it, you know it, everyone sitting here knows it—if we are to believe that government policy is based on public opinion to a huge extent, why do you think it has taken us this long to bring in changes to the Criminal Code with respect to impaired driving in order to stop the carnage on our highways? Why has it taken us this long if government indeed listens to the people it represents? Does anyone have an answer for that?

Mr. Kenneth Roffel: If I may, I'll begin. Probably 10, 12 or 15 years ago, according to my memory, there was a great campaign to talk about reconciliation of families and offenders. I think that had some results in a very positive way, but in a negative way, it also allowed the problem to continue without addressing the real issue of what impairment is and how you know you're there, as you've mentioned.

I see that from groups around the country that have brought families and victims together, the end result being.... My opinion is that there's more empathy for the offender and I think that silently the courts may have picked up on that. Up to this date, we've tried a lot of methods to stop the carnage on the road and none of it has worked.

The Chair: Mr. Talbot, do you have a comment on that as well?

[Translation]

Mr. Lévis Talbot: Originally, Quebeckers and Canadians drove horses. I know because I have horses myself. When you had a drink, the horse would get you home on its own. I think we still have that mind-set. We think that the car will get home on its own and we just have to give it free reign.

Steps have been taken, for all that. The legal system has been improved. When I was younger, you didn't even ask any questions. You went to a bar, you came back out and you drove back home.

I don't have a perfect answer. Society evolves slowly, step- by-step. Steps have already been taken. For example, I saw that Mr. Harris had tabled a proposal in 1997 but I don't know if there's been a lot of improvement since then.

Everyone here is asking us to take another step. It's no big deal. All we're asking for is for the legislation to be improved to afford better protection to the population of Canada.

[English]

The Chair: Go ahead.

Ms. Sharleen Verhulst: It's really hard to comment on that. Jennifer and I asked ourselves that question when we found out that impaired driving legislation hadn't been changed since 1985. Jen and I wondered why. I would have loved to ask the same question: why hasn't it been changed? It has been recognized as a problem for a long time.

People have told me—Jen and I are too young to know—that perceptions have apparently changed a lot in the last 30 years. I guess it's just been a slow, evolving process for perceptions to change and for people to recognize that it's serious and that it's killing us.

• 1035

I think it was just that really slow evolution of coming to that realization. We're very happy now. It's very positive that this realization has been reached, but I don't think that we can give a really well-defined answer as to why it wasn't reached sooner. It's a very good question.

Mr. Richard Harris: I think we have one more point.

The Chair: Very quickly.

Mr. Chuck Cadman (Surrey North, Ref.): I have just a short question for Sharleen. I know that you do a lot of work with students, with young people. I'm just wondering if you've noticed a difference in attitude, a difference in approaches, between young people and the dinosaurs among us.

Ms. Sharleen Verhulst: Yes, and that's actually really positive. I do come across students who say some frustrating thing about how they think it's cool or something to that effect, but I try to really tailor my presentations to schools to get young people.... I mean...I'd like to think I'm cool. Judging from these promises, it is changing. I would like to say that what I'm getting from students is really positive.

From working with police at roadblocks, I have found that the big carloads that come through with a designated driver at the wheel are the youths and that a lot of times the people we're pulling over at roadblocks are in the 30- to 40-year age range. So it is positive that we are making a difference with youth, and I think there's been a lot of effort to get into schools and to get to that component of society before they become our future and before they get into the same problem areas that we're into. That's a good question. I think it's really positive how the opinion is changing among youth.

The Chair: Thank you.

[Translation]

Mr. Dubé.

Mr. Antoine Dubé (Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, BQ): In turn, I would like to tell the witnesses they're showing a lot of courage in doing this. In all cases, one of your loved ones is dead. It's very hard for you and I congratulate you for having come so far.

As I'm from Quebec, I'll address most of my questions to the people from my riding, Mr. Lévis Talbot and Ms. Giroux. You're not necessarily all asking for the same thing. In some cases, you emphasize blood alcohol concentration and in others your demands have mainly to do with repeat offences and leaving the scene. I'd like to give you the opportunity to say a bit more about this.

There are people who are repeat offenders and even repeat several times. The case you've pointed out is one of those, but there have been others. All the awareness campaigns and all the popular educational campaigns will never settle those specific cases. These people, and there are many of them, have caused death. That's what you want to draw the members' attention to, isn't it, Ms. Giroux and Mr. Talbot?

Ms. Marjolaine Giroux: We talked about leaving the scene because we consider someone leaving the scene commits two criminal offences when responsible for the accident; the first one being driving while impaired and killing or injuring someone and the second one is letting the person die when leaving the scene. So, in our opinion, people who leave the scene should be punished for two criminal acts. At the present time, the Criminal Code provides a five-year penalty for the person who stays on the scene while impaired. That's really ridiculous because that encourages people to leave the scene and abandon our loved ones by the wayside.

Mr. Lévis Talbot: I'd like to add that the penalty for leaving the scene is far less than what is provided for in the case of impaired driving. Someone having an accident and causing bodily harm or death is better off leaving the scene and there are two reasons for that.

• 1040

First, you have the matter of the blood-alcohol concentration test. The breathalyser test must be taken within a very short time frame. The result of such a test administered three or four hours after the accident could be found by a court not to be receivable and the person might be freed from the impaired-driving charge. Secondly, as the sentence for leaving the scene is lower, if ever that person is not caught or is caught much later and it can't be proven that he was driving impaired, then he'll get the minimum sentence.

So, in our brief, we're asking that anyone leaving the scene be considered as someone refusing to take the breathalyser test and be handed down the maximum sentence for someone causing an accident while driving impaired. Thank you.

The Chair: Pierre Brien.

Mr. Pierre Brien (Témiscamingue, BQ): I don't want to speak too specifically about your case, but I'd like to know whether a charge of impaired driving causing death was brought.

Ms. Marjolaine Giroux: In Mr. Pichette's case?

Mr. Pierre Brien: Yes.

Ms. Marjolaine Giroux: Yes.

Mr. Pierre Brien: Is it presently before the courts?

Ms. Marjolaine Giroux: Yes. He's gone through the preliminary stages and the trial will probably take place in six or seven months.

Mr. Pierre Brien: During the last year, in Quebec, there have been many cases of people with previous impaired-driving charges. There are even criteria for release which, for example, don't prohibit holding a driver's licence. Would you like us to also look at the conditions for release of these drivers?

Ms. Marjolaine Giroux: In our case, we asked Quebec to suspend the licence and seize the car, but we'd like the Criminal Code to provide for this to be done automatically. Let's talk about the fellow who killed our son. On Monday morning, the judge could have taken his driver's licence away, but he didn't: he let him keep it. We'd like the licence to be withdrawn automatically for these people instead of letting the judge decide whether he should let the person keep the licence or not.

Mr. Pierre Brien: A case very similar to yours unfortunately occurred in Taschereau, close to my area. Often in cases of this type impaired driving is very hard to prove. I don't know whether you have any information on this or whether you have any contacts with people in the Crown attorney's office, but it is very difficult to prove an impaired-driving charge. There was a great deal of media attention paid to the case of Ron Carrière in Quebec. There were negotiations between the lawyers, and then a guilty plea to hit-and-run driving in an exchange for withdrawing the impaired- driving charges. Do things like that disturb you?

Ms. Marjolaine Giroux: I have to tell you that I was very upset. I think bargaining of this type makes no sense. We are asking that hit-and-run cases be considered impaired-driving cases. That would settle the issue.

Mr. Lévis Talbot: This is a borderline case. If people can bargain and get a hit-and-run charge instead of a high blood- alcohol concentration, that proves that the punishment for hit-and- run driving is less severe. This guy got 18 months in prison, but of course he will be serving only one-sixth of his sentence. He will spend about three months in prison for killing someone.

Ms. Marjolaine Giroux: And leaving him to die on the side of the road for half an hour. I can tell you that as a parent, this is not easy to accept.

Mr. Lévis Talbot: The boy who was hit died because he lost so much blood. If the driver had stayed at the scene, if it had not been a hit and run, the boy might have lived.

The Chair: Peter MacKay.

[English]

Mr. Peter MacKay (Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, PC): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

• 1045

I as well want to express my thanks for your presentations, which were very compelling and heartfelt, given that you're speaking for lost loved ones—children, parents and siblings—the best reason of all to convince us that we at this committee have no option but to make changes. We've heard a tremendous amount of evidence, but I think your presentations today were jointly the most powerful in terms of the impact of the current law and some of the “loopholes”, I guess, for lack of a better word.

We on the committee are probably repeating ourselves in some of our remarks and questions, but I did want to share with you a remark that I heard. I appeared often before a judge in Nova Scotia as a crown prosecutor in my home town of New Glasgow, where Judge Clyde MacDonald, in every sentencing of an impaired driver, would make the analogy that a person driving a vehicle while impaired was the same as a person who pointed a gun at every other car that came down the road to meet him.

I think that is a very apt analogy, and it is one that I think ties in with the comments that you were making, Sharleen, about the stigma that exists about impaired driving. Somehow it's not seen to be as serious as other criminal acts, but the impact on the lives of those affected is every bit as real as any criminal act, if not more so, given the result. “Vehicular homicide” is something I certainly advocate inserting in our Criminal Code.

One of the big problems we have seen is the one that you touched on, Madam Giroux, when you talked about rural versus urban and the difficulty of not having the same availability of other modes of transportation in rural parts of this country, that is, you can't get a cab or a bus or a train if you're living in a rural community, so—sadly—people seem more apt to get in a vehicle and drive while they're impaired.

That leads me to believe that one of the most vulnerable areas, one of the areas that we should be concentrating on, is the one of physical impediments to getting behind the wheel of a car. The interlock system, the device that is used more often in the province of British Columbia, I think, appears to be an area that we should be moving on. These devices are more affordable now and there appears to be greater availability.

With that in mind, as well as simply seizing and impounding vehicles, which most recently Ontario has moved towards doing, I think, do you feel these are two areas that we should be looking at entrenching in the Criminal Code in order to make them mandatory? Further to that, a bigger problem that seems to exist is the latitude that is given by judges in these sentencing options. Should we be moving towards making these options mandatory in the Criminal Code?

Ms. Sharleen Verhulst: With respect to seizing the vehicle—although we recognize that this in in the States—Jennifer and I have just found out that in New York they seize vehicles under the same forfeiture law that they use for the weapon at the scene of a crime. We feel exactly the same way about an impaired driving vehicle: it is a weapon, and in other places it has been legislated that it can be seized as a weapon.

With respect to rural areas, I actually get that point a lot in schools when I talk in schools that are way up north. They say they have no buses and no taxis and they ask how they are supposed to get home. I just can't tell them that there's an excuse to not get home.... I always say to them that they have friends who live in the area, and I say, “I'm really sorry that you can't get home, but don't drink.” It's just a really simple answer. I think that needs to be publicly said a little more often: there's just no excuse for not having a safe way home. Hammering home that message is probably going to be easier to accomplish than trying to set something up in terms of getting to the rural areas.

Also, in terms of enforcement in rural areas, things like the two-hour time limit for collecting breath samples being increased to four hours will, I think, help enforcement, because a lot of the time the police officer is trying to get the person back to the detachment to breathalyse them within the two-hour timeline, and if they are in a rural area, they can't get inside that timeline. That's compounded by the fact that if they don't get inside the timeline, they're in a rural area and can't bring an expert in.

Those are things in terms of weapons and rural areas that I see from probably both of our perspectives, I think.

• 1050

Ms. Jennifer Dickson (Individual Presentation): If I may, I also will address the issue of the interlock system. Although the idea has a lot of merit, I think that we should focus a lot on the ownership of the actual act. We talked earlier about differences between youth and drivers who are maybe more experienced. One thing I've seen in my experiences is that youth are a lot less prone to offering excuses, like, “I had no other way, so I had to drive”. We've been brought up with the game plan and we know that there is always an option. I hear that question—“what if there's no other way?”—more from experienced drivers. The answer Sharleen gives is, “That never happens.” You have to plan ahead, and there is always another way to get home. Drinking and driving isn't an excuse. Ownership of that is really important, I think, and it's the responsibility of the individual, even without an interlock system, to keep that in mind before they get behind the wheel.

[Translation]

The Chair: Mr. Talbot.

Mr. Lévis Talbot: I think there are two aspects to your question. The first is about seizing vehicles.

We think seizing vehicles is an extremely good deterrent for two reasons. First of all, we have seen that 75% of offenders continue to drive even though their driver's licence has been confiscated. Second, when we were passing around our petition signed by 140,600 people, many people hesitated to sign it because the second clause dealt with seizing the vehicle. We want vehicles to be seized. We think this is what makes people think the most. Ultimately, this is what affects them the most.

It may be a pain for a woman to have the family vehicle seized because her husband failed a breathalyser test. However, I think that all family members feel the effects of the behaviour of other members of the family and may be able to influence the behaviour of other members of the family. If the man was the person who drove while impaired, the children and his wife may exert pressure on him to change his behaviour.

The second point was the ignition interlock. Material on this device shows that it is extremely effective, provided it is in place on the vehicle. Once the system is removed from the vehicle, people fall back into their old habits.

We did not discuss this in our brief, but we think there should be ignition interlocks, and that they should almost be part of the standard equipment on vehicles. That might also answer Mr. Kenneth Roffel's question. We have odometres on cars and we know how fast we are going. An ignition interlock would indicate a person's blood-alcohol concentration before they drive. We would need to talk about the economic factors involved, because this would cost everyone money, not just those who really need it.

Ms. Marjolaine Giroux: May I add something?

[English]

The Chair: Very quickly, Mrs. Giroux.

[Translation]

Ms. Marjolaine Giroux: I agree with Ms. Verhulst—it's important to change people's attitudes. Ignition interlocks are just crutches. People have to come to the realization someday that they must never drive when they are drunk.

If they live in rural communities and have no opportunity to get someone to drive them home, then they simply do not drive. That is all there is to it. In any case, that is how things should be, in rural communities and elsewhere.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you. Mr. John McKay.

• 1055

Mr. John McKay (Scarborough East, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank all of you for your presentations. This is quite gripping.

Mr. Roffel, I wanted to ask you about your basic proposal here that this will be zero tolerance. We'll take Mr. White as an example. Mr. White had a drink last night, got into his car and was picked up.

A voice: Not this Mr. White.

Mr. Randy White: Not this Mr. White. He doesn't drink.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Mr. John McKay: No, use me as an example. What I want to know about is what happens when I get picked up if there's zero tolerance and I have .02 alcohol in my blood. Under your proposal, the police have me dead to rights, but what I was confused about is that you talked in terms of a summary conviction and you talked in terms of jail time. Those two don't necessarily link. Can you explain to me what you mean by your proposal?

Mr. Kenneth Roffel: It's the one question that we were asked a lot in the last two and a half years of our zero tolerance campaign. What about that one drink? The research company that I hired looked at the 750 respondents. The data clearly shows that those affluent and well-educated Canadians are part of that new attitude to forfeit that one drink with dinner if it's a glass of wine. The question focuses on how much alcohol there is in that one drink, what the size is of that one drink. As you know, if it's a double there's obviously a lot more alcohol in it.

Our petition is asking for the immediate removal from the road of a drunk driver in order to put the power of the law back into the hands of the police, so that, as we heard in testimony on Monday and yesterday, it doesn't happen that only 10 to 12 hours later we find that individual back on the road again, like we do now. The research that Zero Tolerance conducted shows that interlocking devices, taking vehicles away and taking driver's licences away don't work. What will work is taking that person out of the system.

On summary conviction, they still face, if there has been death or an injury.... The zero tolerance campaign is asking for the immediate removal of an individual from behind the wheel of the vehicle. That would be the main deterrent: that you're gone. Due process would still occur.

Mr. John McKay: So I've been removed and I will have my day in court. Am I subject to a potential jail sentence for that charge?

Mr. Kenneth Roffel: No, not if there are no bodily injuries or deaths. The way the petition reads, the seven days for a first offence is the penalty. The second time around, if there are no injuries or deaths, the penalty is fourteen days. The third time around, if there are no injuries or deaths—

Mr. John McKay: Seven days of what, though?

Mr. Kenneth Roffel: Of jail time—seven days in jail.

Mr. John McKay: One drink gets me seven days.

Mr. Kenneth Roffel: That's right. It's zero tolerance.

Mr. John McKay: Yes, I understand that. I just want to be clear about it in my own mind.

We heard testimony that for every charge there are certainly something in excess of 200—I can't recollect the testimony exactly—incidents of drinking and driving. Have you researched what your reduction to zero tolerance would do in terms of (a) the number of incidents and (b) the number of charges and how that would impact on the criminal justice system?

Mr. Kenneth Roffel: Yes. Yesterday we heard Sweden mentioned, where the BAC is .02.

Mr. John McKay: That's right.

Mr. Kenneth Roffel: They neglected to point out that the penalties in Sweden are now among the stiffest in the world. Their new attitude is that for a first offence, it's one year in jail.

• 1100

Our research conducted with our research group showed that Canadians felt that this one year in jail was too harsh a penalty, but that they would accept seven days. So when we look at what's working globally with zero tolerance or as close as possible to zero tolerance...in my view, .02 is really zero tolerance. Recently I learned that the measuring device the police use starts at .03, so it gauges it. We've also heard—

Mr. John McKay: What's the correlation? I was not here yesterday, but I was here the day before, and my recollection of the testimony—I've forgotten the name of the witness—was that Sweden's way is definitely not the way to go, that it in fact achieves nothing in terms of getting people off the roads.

Mr. Kenneth Roffel: In my presentation to this committee, you'll see the Swedish example used. Sweden went from 80 milligrams to 50 milligrams and the difference in injuries and death was only 1.14%. But in going from .05—or 50 milligrams—down to .02, it has gone to number four with impaired drivers and it has reduced injuries and death by 375%. Again, they neglected to point that out with respect to Sweden.

Looking at all of the statistics—and, yes, as you folks know, you can look at them and skew them any way you want to in order to support what you're saying—if you look at the picture of what's working, the .02 in Sweden is working. Deaths or injuries caused by impaired drivers is at number four. High-speed crashes—

Mr. John McKay: I'm worried about the perverse consequences of your proposal. Again using me as an example, let's say that I've been nailed. Now I'm going to throw everything I have at that charge. I'm going to hire the biggest, fanciest, most expensive lawyer. I'm going to delay. I'm going to do everything to avoid a criminal conviction. That's because I live a middle-class lifestyle and the impact for me is far beyond that of the incident, where, arguably, I wasn't even impaired. We can go through your charts, but arguably I was able to play football that night if I chose to do so.

I'd just be curious to hear if you've done any study on the perverse impact, the unintended consequences, of your proposal on the criminal justice system in this country. Intuitively, I would say, that will just ratchet up cases and will create an enormous burden on the system itself. Do you have any data on that?

Mr. Kenneth Roffel: The data I have shows that this won't occur. The questioning—which was 15-minute telephone interviews with 750 Canadians, including residents of the territories—shows from their response.... This is not a “do you intend to drink?” kind of question or a “do you intend to fight the law if you get caught having one drink?” kind of question, because you can't base anything on a possibility of something happening. We have to look at the raw numbers, at the data that is there, which shows that seven days would be a deterrent, that it would work. We haven't gone beyond that point.

Looking at getting rid of that .08 is new territory for me, as it is for you folks on this committee, and if you can honestly tell me that after one or two drinks you know what your blood-alcohol level is—

Mr. John McKay: I think that's a good point in your presentation.

Mr. Kenneth Roffel: It is reflective of a lot of Canadians, both male and female. From the data, females tend to support zero tolerance. Again, it skews higher to females than it does males. When we look at that new attitude in Canada, it is there with both males and females, but it skews slightly higher to women.

Mr. John McKay: For a person like—

The Chair: Mr. McKay, I think we'll have to come back to you.

Mr. White, your three-minute round.

Mr. Randy White: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

After listening to the discussion, I think Mr. McKay could have avoided the legal costs in the first place by not drinking and driving. That would be my response.

I want to ask a very quick question and then a general question. I'd like to ask Sharleen how many drunk-driving accidents she thinks occur.

• 1105

Ms. Sharleen Verhulst: Zero, Randy. I really like reiterating the fact that I don't want to see impaired-driving collisions or speed-related collisions called “car accidents”. They're just not accidents. They're 100% avoidable. It's a cognitive decision to get behind the wheel. There's just no room for compassion for somebody who drinks and drives. It's a selfish act. It's an act whereby you're basically sending a message to the community that you want yourself home and you want your car home and that's your only concern. It ignores the social impact of impaired driving. That's why I prefer to call it not an accident but a crash or a collision.

In terms of how many collisions do occur, there are thousands and thousands of them.

Mr. Randy White: Thank you.

Ms. Sharleen Verhulst: Thanks, Randy.

Mr. Randy White: I would like to thank all of the witnesses for appearing here today. I know it is very difficult to talk about the things that have occurred in your life, but you are here for a purpose, a very good purpose indeed.

We in this room know that we have to make some changes. You've basically arrived at the doorstep of where the change is going to be made. To some extent, this is the last step in the process for you as far as getting legislation changed is concerned. In terms of numbers, very few people across the country have had the opportunity to get to this point. I want to not only congratulate you but I want you to just express to this committee, each one of you very quickly.... Almost 5% of the House of Commons sitting in this room, and I'd like you to just advise the committee about what exactly it is that you want the committee to do. They have a report on this coming out next week, I think. Legislation will be developed. What do you wish these members of Parliament in this room to do after listening to you?

The Chair: Ms. Verhulst.

Ms. Sharleen Verhulst: The one thing I can ask for that sort of encompasses everybody's request is just that any changes that are made reflect the seriousness of the offence. In terms of tougher legislation and in terms of lowering the blood-alcohol content, everything that was mentioned has been mentioned for the purpose of reflecting the seriousness of the offence.

I'll go back to the point about how legislation has a tremendous opportunity to change public perception. People ask what's going to happen with courts and they say that our jails are going to be overloaded, but—this might be an idealistic view—I'm hoping that our courts won't be overloaded and that our jails won't be full because people are going to recognize this and not do it, and it's not going to happen.

Mr. Randy White: Could you all comment, just briefly?

Ms. Jennifer Dickson: What Sharleen and I also would like to see happen with the committee is to have Canada take a leading role in terms of what's happening globally.

Ms. Sharleen Verhulst: Yes.

Ms. Jennifer Dickson: I know that Sweden is at .02. Sweden and Japan are at the forefront. They're standing out there alone, and I don't see anything wrong with Canadians stepping forward and, as Sharleen says, talking about the seriousness of events and saying that it's time to take a lead in what's happening globally, in helping to change it.

Mr. Randy White: Thank you.

Mr. Kenneth Roffel: There are three things I'd like this committee to look at. One is getting rid of the .08 and making it .00. I would also ask that the committee impose stiffer sentences on convicted impaired drivers. Also—it is part of my presentation—I would ask that committee make the process a lot easier for the police, with a single sheet to fill out rather than the two or three hours of paperwork while standing at the side of the road and doing charades with impaired drivers.

Thank you.

Mr. Doug Abernethy: There's one thing I'd like to say. From the Addiction Research Foundation, I have a report, Assessing the potential impact of lowering the legal blood-alcohol limit to 50 milligrams in Canada. Just briefly, in the bottom part of the paragraph, it says:

Very little research exists on the potential negative consequences of lowering the BAC limit from 80 to 50 milligrams. There will be resulting costs and harms that need to be considered. One factor that could influence the likelihood of negative impact is acceptance of any new legislation by the public and by police and judicial authorities. Then, differential enforcement and judicial practices could arise.

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Furthermore, if the general public strongly disagrees with the legislation then it may have very little deterrent value. As well, if a decision is made to introduce a lower legal BAC limit, a failure to provide the police with resources necessary to enforce the law could jeopardize any beneficial impact it would have.

There was also a report by the Canada Safety Council in which they said that they don't support a lower BAC of 50 milligrams. They support 80 milligrams on the basis that if the level were enforced, lives would be saved. In my summary, in recommendation 1, I recommend a tiered penalty based on the BAC; recommendation 2 is ignition-interlock devices; recommendation 3 is mandatory assessment and rehabilitation; recommendation 4 is passive alcohol sensors.

[Translation]

Mr. Lévis Talbot: I would like members of Parliament to start be reviewing our material and our comments. I would even like them to go a little further. I was a little short on time and I may not have had the skills required to do an in-depth study of existing legislation to find the best—not necessarily the most expensive—deterrents to impaired driving, to simplify the current procedures for the breathalyser test and to extend the legal length of time available in which to do the breathalyser in order to prevent hit-and-run cases as much as possible.

Our last point is the most important one as regards hit-and- run cases. We recommend that the sentence for failure to remain at the scene of an accident be the same as the maximum sentence for drunk driving so as to discourage hit-and-run cases as much as possible.

Ms. Marjolaine Giroux: I agree with Lévis.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Saada.

Mr. Jacques Saada (Brossard—La Prairie, Lib.): Thank you for your presentations. I will not make the obvious comment about how difficult it must have been for you to make your presentations, and so on, but I am very pleased that you took the time and had the courage to make them.

With your permission, I would like to respond briefly to the question raised by my colleague Harris. Why is it that nothing has been done? Sharleen has actually already started answering the question.

A few years ago, we would never have thought of the concept of designated drivers. Now that is something people do think about; not enough, but it is done. Whenever there are highway accidents, the media start by reporting that alcohol may or may not have been a factor. The mere fact that this is systematically done in itself reflects a change in attitude. The Quebec campaign whose slogan was "Drinking and Driving is Criminal" had a great impact on people, particularly young people. So we have a serious problem. There are still 1,400 highway deaths caused by alcohol every year in Canada, and we have a serious problem to deal with. However, I don't want to be entirely pessimistic as my colleague seems to suggest, because we have made some progress as a society.

I do think some change is required, but I have two problems regarding the presentations we have heard. There was mention of imposing harsher sentences. At the moment, the Criminal Code provides for up to 14 years of prison for a crime of this type, but judges never give such sentences. Would a maximum penalty of 25 years change anything? In other words, would we solve the problem by imposing harsher sentences? I'm not so sure.

There was also mention of zero tolerance. We can assume, and this is being confirmed quite often by our witnesses, that most accidents involving impaired driving are caused by people who have been charged with impaired driving before.

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[English]

People who ignore awareness campaigns, people who ignore the law, people who are not deterred by the sanctions and people who continue driving because of all kinds of other problems that have nothing to do with awareness of the crime...these people are not going to be affected whether you have zero tolerance, .02 tolerance or .08 tolerance. In going to zero tolerance, you are indeed going to alert more people to the need to avoid this and to make it a criminal offence, but I don't think you're going to resolve two-thirds of the problem.

This is my question for you. Let's say that you are members of Parliament. You have heard not one testimony, not three testimonies, but approximately fifty or sixty testimonies and briefs and all kinds of things, and they give you all kinds of contradictions on the merits of each one of those approaches. But as a member of Parliament, you mean well, you want to take the right action and you want to be efficient. If there were one priority, which one would it be for each of you, knowing that we heard the counter-arguments for the things that you brought up? What would be the thing on which you would concentrate, especially to fight the recidivists, the repeat offenders?

Mr. John McKay: The losers.

Mr. Jacques Saada: The losers.

Ms. Sharleen Verhulst: There were three things that you brought up. One was the fact that there is a maximum of fourteen years and nobody actually gets fourteen years. In conjunction with the seven-year minimum, I think it's all going to be bumped up a little bit, because that's the way sentences would start going, and even if a judge isn't giving life, I think it would nice to give the judge the chance to give it. That would be the judge's prerogative.

The other thing that was talked about was repeat offenders and how you get to them. In terms of shaping public perception, I think it's not just about stopping people who are doing it, it's about mobilizing other people to step in. If someone is reoffending but everybody else in society is taking it seriously.... Now we have people calling them in. Now we have people who aren't over-serving people at parties and people who aren't over-serving in business. Other people are taking a proactive approach to the repeat offenders. This is about mobilizing the people around them, not just getting at them.

Mr. Jacques Saada: Yes. If I may, I'll make just one quick comment. I forgot to say that I am very impressed by two very original proposals you have made, which I don't think we have heard before, although I stand to be corrected.

One has to do with the passenger being charged as a party to the offence. I do not know the implications of it, so I don't know whether I'm going to be in agreement or not, but I find it extremely interesting as a concept.

The second one has to do with exchanging the word “accident” for the words “vehicular homicide”. I'm not saying that I'm not impressed by what you were suggesting, but I want to see one thing, not a symbol, because we already have a symbol.

[Translation]

The purpose of the “Drinking and Driving is Criminal” campaign in Quebec was to change attitudes, to increase the awareness not only of those who drive or who were planning to drive or who might have driven while impaired, but also all the people they had around them. So it is no longer socially acceptable for people to drive while impaired. So that much has been done, but it has not been enough. So I'm looking for a solution that goes farther.

Ms. Marjolaine Giroux: I will give you one.

Mr. Jacques Saada: All right.

Ms. Marjolaine Giroux: “No licence, no car.” In the end, cars are the problem. People can drink as much as they want; if they don't drive, there will be no problem—I mean no social problem, of course.

When people show that they do not understand the issue well enough not to drive while impaired, we confiscate their car and they can no longer drive. I think that is THE way, because it deals with the problem at its source.

No one here is a criminal. Some people drink. Prison does not affect them because they imagine they could never be responsible for someone's death some day. That's what all of us really think. Even though we drink, we don't think that we could go so far as to kill someone while driving after drinking. Somehow people are not affected. However, if people think that their car will be confiscated tomorrow if they drive while impaired, that will affect them. It affects them, it affects their egos. In this day and age, people live very much for themselves; people are individualists. I think that would be the solution.

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[English]

The Chair: Thank you.

The member from the Bloc, Monsieur Brien.

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre Brien: I would like to comment briefly on something Mr. Saada said, with all due respect to him.

Subsections 255(2) and 255(3) of the Criminal Code provide for the following penalties: impaired driving causing bodily harm, 10 years; causing death, 14 years; failure to stop at the scene of an accident, five years. So the Code does reflect the value judgement in the length of the penalties. If I were a judge, I would take Parliament's intentions into account. Maximum sentences of 10, 14 or 5 years do indicate different levels of seriousness. People say that we have to impose harsher penalties. I think we will be able to reach agreement on that.

Mr. Jacques Saada: With your permission, I would like to pay tribute to the work done systematically by Mr. Brien regarding this specific aspect of hit-and-run incidents. This is one of the important issues raised since the beginning of our hearings. We're not disagreeing.

Mr. Pierre Brien: No. I just wanted to make that clarification.

I would like to ask Jennifer and Sharleen a question. You did an experiment with the breathalyser, and you said that you had to drink a great deal before reaching a certain level. Tell us more about what you remember of that experiment.

[English]

Ms. Sharleen Verhulst: Oh, yes. That was a very interesting experiment. Jennifer and I went to my boss at the RCMP detachment and basically asked if we could drink at work, which seemed like an odd request to him. In terms of how much alcohol we had to drink, we actually do have a copy of the experiment, so we can give you a copy. We were literally at the point where we were seeing double, we were dizzy and we were not getting out of our chairs, and we were still blowing a “warn”, which is between .03 and .05. At one point, we were obviously intoxicated and we were blowing a “pass”. At the point at which the experiment was over—we actually made an error in our experiment and consumed 13 ounces of alcohol in 35 minutes, which we didn't intend to do—Jennifer still blew .09, just barely over the .08 limit even though she had consumed that amount of alcohol.

Now, we're small, and granted that it is different for different people, but in terms of the fact that we were pretty much incapacitated and we were under the legal limit, it was a real eye-opening experience for us in terms of what the legal limit is now.

[Translation]

Mr. Pierre Brien: Two groups were pushing specifically for a reduced blood alcohol limit. People seem to think—and I would be the first to admit this—that 0.8 reflects average alcohol consumption. You are of the saying that a BAC requires very heavy alcohol consumption.

If we were to reduce the current limit, I think this might not be accepted by society, because people think that 0.8 is satisfactory. I think we have to start by letting people know how much has to be drunk to actually reach 0.8. That would be the first thing we would have to do before we could reduce the limit. So people have to realize just how much alcohol has to be consumed to reach 0.8. We need to make people aware of the problem—that would have to be done before we could successfully reduce the limit. Would you agree?

[English]

Ms. Sharleen Verhulst: It's one of the things we researched. There's a book called Medicolegal Aspects of Alcohol, which was actually put together by judges and lawyers who did a lot of studying on .08 and whether it was reasonable or not. They found that 50% of the population is impaired at .04. You're absolutely right about the fact that people think .08 is not a lot. They think that's fine.

But you have to consume a lot of alcohol before you reach .08—and I've seen them brought in. I've worked at the detachment for four years now. I see impaired drivers walk in, I see them having to be held up and I see them having to be carried, and I see them blow under .08. What you're saying about researching what .08 means and telling the public that .08 is a lot is a really important step, I think, in telling the public that lowering the blood-alcohol limit is the right way to go.

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Ms. Jennifer Dickson: Also, in the book that Sharleen referred to, another thing they mention is that in terms of levels of impairment, impairment can actually begin at as low as .01 or once you exceed .01. They were taking into consideration vision, perception and other things as well, but if levels are occurring that early and 50% of the population is at a significant level of impairment at .04, then .08.... It was really covering too many bases in terms of covering the entire population and their levels of impairment.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Brien. Mr. McKay.

Mr. John McKay: I want to go back to the issue of how your presentations will impact upon this lawless cohort that Mr. Saada has described. Basically, one per cent of the drivers cause two-thirds of the problems. I just don't see how lowering this to .00 or .02 or .05 will really impact on that cohort at all. Can you give me a response to that? I'm really interested in how anything you've said will impact them.

I'll start with you, Mr. Roffel.

Mr. Kenneth Roffel: When I looked at the .08—and Sharleen has mentioned how much alcohol it is—I did research. If there's an opportunity before you make your final recommendations, I would ask this committee to put together a focus group of hard-core repeat offenders and research that group to find out what the deterrents would really be. What do they know about alcohol? What do they know about the effects of alcohol on them? That's the only way in which you could make any reasonable assessment. Research that group.

I don't have the answers because I didn't talk to a lot of repeat offenders. I talked to many people who were friends of Bill Wilson at AA, and who, when they hit bottom, recognized what they had done. The repeat offender obviously has not hit bottom. But I think maybe the answer to your question is to commission a study on that repeat offender to find out what it would take to get that repeat offender to stop and to find out what legislation you could introduce to insure Canadians against the repeat offender.

Mr. John McKay: So I guess the substance of your proposals really directs itself to the other third, to the people who are amenable to education, to the people for whom the impact of lowering rates or increasing fines or increasing jail sentences is significant.

Mr. Kenneth Roffel: No. My presentation is based on all Canadians. About a month ago, the chief of police in Vancouver got a roadside suspension. His comment was that he didn't know what his blood-alcohol limit was. He's the chief of police. In taking the high road, when I talked to his assistant, I asked.... When you look at this, at what zero tolerance is to all Canadians....

Mr. John McKay: Have you researched how those kinds of devices could be made available? There isn't a person in this room who hasn't thought about what their blood-alcohol is in any given social situation. I've wondered, frankly, why those kinds of devices can't be more readily available so that people can in fact make educated decisions. Are those kinds of devices readily available? Could that be a recommendation of this committee?

Mr. Kenneth Roffel: I did hear presentations to your committee about digital.... Again, zero tolerance takes the guesswork out of where your blood-alcohol level is. If you plan to drink, plan not to drive.

Mr. John McKay: But in some respects, virginity takes the guesswork out of getting pregnant, too.

Voices: Oh, oh.

The Chair: Last question, Mr. McKay, please.

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Mr. John McKay: The final question is with respect to the police time. In effect, you want to increase the time to four hours.

Ms. Jennifer Dickson: That's right.

Mr. John McKay: We've heard testimony that from point of incident to point of conviction is something in the order of 8.5 hours of a police officer's time, which, by anyone's standards, seems to be a considerable amount of time. How would your proposal impact on that statistic?

Ms. Sharleen Verhulst: Some of the time component has to do with booking and the offender, but the vast majority of the time component has to do with paperwork, so it's not going to affect the paperwork that they still have.

The four-hour time limit would actually decrease the work of police officers by virtue of the fact that once they get beyond the two hours—which happens quite a bit—they're not going to have to bring in an expert and they're not going to have to get different certificates made up to say it's three hours instead of two. It's actually going to be more feasible for officers to move from two hours to four.

The Chair: Mr. Abernethy, do you have a comment?

Mr. Doug Abernethy: Yes, I have a comment about increasing the two hours to four hours. As far as I know, it's a criminal offence to refuse to take a breathalyser test. I know that a lot of impaired drivers who are brought to the police station want to call their lawyer first, before they take the breathalyser test. I say that we should do away with the two hours. Let them take the breath test first and then let them call their lawyer.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Mr. Peter MacKay.

Mr. Peter MacKay: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I've been mulling this over for a long time. It seems that there are two distinct areas that we're dealing with. We're dealing with deterrence, with the after-the-fact processing, and sadly, “after the fact” doesn't bring people back. The deterrent settlement, I suppose, has the old general and specific effect. It can affect the person who's been caught and maybe deter them, and it sets an example, I guess, when you have the broader publication of what's happened to a person as a result of that.

Then you get into the element of rehabilitating that offender, the treatment aspect of it. All of you, I think, have done a great deal in terms of raising public awareness. It's happening, but there's a lag time until it actually kicks in.

One thing I would suggest to you as persons who are participating in this public awareness process is that if you ever have the opportunity to talk to judges, who live in very isolated worlds, you can share the impact with them. Regardless of the rules that we make or the rule changes that result from our deliberations, the judges are still the ones who apply them. Quite properly, we don't have judges appear before us, but ultimately they work with the tools that we give them, as do the police and the crown and defence lawyers. I share that as an aside.

Picking up on John McKay's point and the points that you've made about streamlining the process, this seems to be an area in which we can have an impact. Removing some of the evidentiary hurdles or burdens that police officers face daily in court or that crown prosecutors face in terms of getting the evidence in for due consideration appears to be a task that we can at least undertake here. The comment was made about putting the power back into the hands of the police. Giving the ability to immediately suspend is, I think, one that takes the instrument of death away. It takes away the vehicle; it removes the vehicle from the hands of the offender.

I invite further comment on what we can do to remove some of the complications that exist in the law. There's a labyrinth that has to be followed, particularly in cases where there is a rollback required by the Crown to produce the evidence that is outside of the two-hour time limit.

What other experience or knowledge can you share with us about complications that exist in the current law in terms of the presentation of evidence, that is, in terms of actually holding somebody accountable? It's one thing to try to catch more people who are out there committing this offence, but after they've been caught, it appears to me, there is still a great number of them who escape accountability or responsibility because of the state of the current law.

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[Translation]

Mr. Lévis Talbot: At the moment suspects are brought to the police station to undergo a breathalyser test. The police officer asks them whether they want to call their lawyer and then the breathalyser test is administered. It generally takes about three hours. We now have modern techniques and breath analyzers that are much more reliable than they were a few years ago. We also have cellular telephones that allow for more discreet conversations. Consequently, we should be allowing police officers to administer breathalyser tests at the scene, in their police vehicles. The police officer could offer suspects the use of the police telephone to call their lawyer directly. I think this would greatly reduce the time required to do the breathalyser test.

I want to come back to a point you were mentioning earlier. You suggested we make judges more aware of the problem, that we talk to them about it. That could be done, but we could also take away judge's discretionary authority regarding some aspects of the law, for example confiscation of the driver's licence. At the moment, this is left up to the judges' discretion. If judges think that the individual can be allowed to keep his driver's licence after the offence, they do not confiscate the licence. In some cases, under some sections, Parliament could remove this discretionary authority of judges, because it feels that some aspects of the law must be enforced more strictly.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. MacKay.

Go ahead, Sharleen.

Ms. Sharleen Verhulst: I'll be very quick.

With respect to doing the breathalyser in the car and having a cell phone, unfortunately you can't do that, because the breathalyser has to take place in a special room. That's why you can't do a charge on a roadside screening device. The other thing is that you can contact your lawyer in private without delay, so for “in private”, I guess you'd need to have your own room instead of a cell phone. So I don't know if that would work.

One of the things that the attorney general's office in B.C. has done a lot of in terms of trying to speed up paperwork processes with other charges is to develop a checklist. We looked at an opinion survey of police officers that said 62% of cases are tossed because of paperwork errors. I think that even just being able to submit a checklist, with all these police departments asking if you have checked for this or that before it goes to the Crown.... The implied consent clause is going to really relieve a lot of the burden on the police in terms of what they have to prove in court and the complications surrounding that.

Third, we really looked at disclosure a lot. The fact is, in B.C. it takes 25 weeks to clear a case in which the person has actually said he is guilty. One of the reasons is that the defence just comes up with the most creative things. Wow! I can't believe it when they come up with this stuff.

I understand how our system is founded and we can't say that the defence has to fully disclose to the Crown, although I would love that to happen, but in terms of regulating disclosure and in the event of disclosing an error on a certificate, for example, or disclosing those sorts of defences that aren't infringing on the rights of the accused and aren't taking anything away from the adversarial system, but pulling all that complication and paperwork because the defence has come up with.... I've heard the defence that the breathalyser room floor was washed with brand X cleaner and that has alcohol in it and that affected the breathalyser itself. So the Crown had to research that. I think those sorts of things should be regulated in the disclosure process. That would relieve a lot of the—

Mr. Peter MacKay: The classic technical breaches.

Ms. Sharleen Verhulst: Oh, yes, and paperwork and—

The Chair: Thank you. Ms. Carroll.

Ms. Aileen Carroll (Barrie—Simcoe—Bradford, Lib.): I won't hold you longer, but—

The Chair: This is the last round.

• 1140

Ms. Aileen Carroll: Indeed.

I thank you, as my colleagues have, for your courage and for the difficult process you went through to bring your insights to us.

It seems to me that the discussion is reflecting an important distinction this morning, that being that we're working at two ends of a process. We're dealing with consequences for action, and we're dealing, as I think the young women have really highlighted well, with the beginning of a process, with behavioural change, which is a much tougher place. In many ways, when we as legislators deal with dilemmas, it's far easier to quickly go heavy with the consequence rather than walk back and deal with what caused the action and therefore with what remedy has to be applied to the causes.

I draw to your attention to the failure—from all the studies that have been made of it—of the “Just Say No!” anti-drugs campaign with respect to young people in the States. It failed because it failed to address the causes.

Too, some of the critics of the legislation in a private members' bill dealing with tobacco, critics who came forward here, indicated that a whole of money went into advertising on that alone. I don't say that we don't need public awareness. Indeed we do, but simply seeing that as the sole vehicle would fail. Again, with the smoking and youth issue, we have to look at why kids in high school are smoking. A lot of studies showed that when you started to address why youngsters were dropping out, you saw a lot of changes in how they felt about themselves and you saw a decrease in smoking.

As we try to come up with the best report we can, I think we need to look at both the consequences and the behaviour. That statistic that Mr. MacKay mentioned, which you all seemed to know—that one per cent of drivers cause two-thirds of the problems—is a huge problem, and the problem of that behaviour and how it can be addressed is huge.

But I will say to both young women that I think you are very much addressing this when you talk about dealing with young people and talking with them about planning. You have to plan. You have to look at the consequences of the evening. You have to plan ahead of time. You have to look at the behaviour that will take you down a certain road and you have to look at how you will alter that behaviour.

This has been excellent, with a great deal of insight, and I thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Thank you.

Are there any comments on Ms. Carroll's comment?

There being none, let me say to our witnesses that we very much appreciate you being here this morning. Your personal experiences with impaired drivers have certainly impacted us as well. Good things will hopefully come out of your presentations here today. Thank you.