This week's Calgary Herald column from yours truly looks at the debate over random breathalyzers (or random breath tests (RBTs)) and whether the federal government should follow through with a recommendation from the Commons Justice Committee that the law change to allow them. I argue that Ottawa should not:
...Canadians are clearly concerned about impaired driving, and supporters of RBTs maintain that allowing police to force citizens at random to provide a breath sample will help address the problem.
However, merely touting the effectiveness of a proposed police tool does not tell the whole story.
No doubt random, warrantless searches and phone taps would produce glowing crime-reduction statistics. Surely, though, no reasonable person would find that tolerable in a democratic society.
Consider, for example, random bag and locker searches at schools - wouldn't that be effective in dealing with drugs and weapons? But the debate would have nothing to do with its effectiveness and everything to do with its intrusiveness.
Indeed, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled specifically against the random use of drug-sniffing dogs in schools. The court found that it violated Section 8 of the Charter, which guarantees against unreasonable search or seizure.
The ruling also addressed the case of a man who was found with drugs in his bag at the Calgary Greyhound bus station. The court found police "did not have grounds for reasonable suspicion" when making use of a drug-sniffing dog.
It's not hard to see how such a principle could apply to RBTs. Remember, this change would eliminate the requirement for reasonable suspicion.
But is the debate here merely one between the effectiveness of RBTs and their constitutional validity? Is the effectiveness of RBTs beyond question?
On the surface there would seem to be compelling evidence. However, it's evidence complicated by the fact that virtually all relevant jurisdictions have seen substantial reductions in impaired driving over the last three decades.
In Alberta, for example, we saw a ten per cent drop in impaired driving offenses in 1993. That was followed in subsequent years by a 26 per cent drop, an 18.5 per cent drop, and a 6.5 per cent drop.
Those also happened to be the first few years of liquor privatization. Could we then credit the privatization of liquor sales for a reduction in impaired driving?
New Zealand is one of the countries which has implemented RBTs and is one of the examples often cited by those who would import the policy here.
However, the experience in New Zealand has been less than impressive. One study found that while it was expected the new law would mean an "immediate and obvious reduction in alcohol-related accidents" it was "clear that this did not happen." The reductions in 1993 - the year the law was introduced - were no different than reductions in 1991 or 1992.
Of course, one important distinction to note is that that most other countries only allow RBTs within the confines of what we would call a Checkstop.
Ottawa's proposal would allow police officers to ask anyone, anywhere, at anytime to submit to a breathalyzer test.
How big a problem is this? Do we have documented cases of a drunk driver having been stopped and released by police only to subsequently cause a crash? It's possible that such a thing has happened, but it's telling that no one has cited a case.
There are other means of combating impaired driving that do not entail giving police such an intrusive tool.
To its credit, the Commons committee has proposed some of them, including increased penalties for repeat and severely impaired offenders. They've also proposed creating a new indictable criminal negligence charge, and linking fines for a first impaired driving offence to BAC levels.
These proposals, coupled with an effective awareness campaign, could go a long way in making our streets safer.
It's unclear how effective random breath testing might be, but what is clear is that it could too easily be abused and that it represents the sort of unwarranted search from which the Charter is to keep us protected from.
UPDATE: Oh, it is on! Naomi Lakritz in today's Herald writes:
This is one occasion when public safety trumps individual liberty. On Tuesday, Rob Breakenridge wrote on this page that he hopes Canadians "will consider what (roadside breathalyzers) would mean in practice and will tell Ottawa to scrap the idea." My hope is that they'll tell Ottawa the exact opposite
No comments:
Post a Comment