Editorial Comment: Hanson Misses the Point

(Don't forget, my daily editorial comment airs weekday mornings at 6:12 with Bruce Kenyon and the Morning News, and again at 12:20pm with Wayne Nelson and Today So Far)
Friday's editorial comment:

Calgary's police chief has entered the fray in the debate over random breathalyzers.
However, in doing so, Rick Hanson has inadvertently shown why there is a real need for caution in potentially going down this path.
Alberta's justice minister recently indicated the provincial government would support the introduction of random breath tests, and yesterday on QR77, police chief Rick Hanson declared his support, as well.
Hanson claims too many drunk drivers get off on technicalities, and allowing officers to request a breathalyzers without the need for reasonable suspicion would prevent that.
What Hanson calls "technicalities", however, in many cases are legitimate questions. Police should have a reason for pulling people over, and if random breath testing also means police can stop people for no apparent reason, then that is cause for concern.
Essentially police would never have to justify pulling someone over if they could simply pull out a breathalyzer and use that as an excuse for stopping and detaining someone.
The concern raised by civil liberties organizations is that there needs to be check and balances when it comes to why and how people are being stopped by police.
There are all sorts of shortcuts we could enact into law that would make things easier for police officers, but we are on a slippery close if we simply disregard any concern for civil liberties.
Chief Hanson was on the right side on the liberty equation when he opposed the gun registry - other police chiefs were using basically the same argument to defend the registry that Hanson is using to justify random breathalyzers.
We should be concerned about giving police this power - Chief Hanson has shown us why.

UPDATE: More thoughts from me (in the form of a recent column on the subject) on why random breathalyzers are a bad idea:

It may not be too late to pull Ottawa back from the random breath test (RBT) abyss. While the government appears poised to introduce RBTs, one of several recommendations made last year by the Commons justice committee, they've first posted a discussion paper online and have sought feedback from Canadians.
While polls show support in principle for RBTs, hopefully Canadians will consider what this would mean in practice and will tell Ottawa to scrap the idea.
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 is evidence complicated by the fact that virtually all relevant jurisdictions have seen reductions in impaired driving over the last three decades.
In Alberta, for example, we saw a 10 per cent drop in impaired driving offences 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 often cited by those who would import the policy here.
However, 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 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.
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 blood-alcohol 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.

Also, see the concerns raised by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association
UPDATE #2: The Calgary Herald editorial board comes out against random breathalyzers.

Calgary Herald Column: Politicians Should Stop Demonizing Craigslist

This week's Herald column from yours truly looks at how Canadian politicians are following the lead of their US counterparts in going after the website Craigslist:

 

...Last Friday, the Alberta government announced it was joining Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan in demanding that Craigslist remove these ("erotic services") ads. However, just seven days previous, the Solicitor General was expressing skepticism about how effective such a campaign would be.
If the Alberta government's sudden zeal seems less than genuine, there's no doubting the enthusiasm of Wildrose Alliance MLA Heather Forsyth, who was "appalled" the Alberta government took so long to get on the bandwagon.
For an ostensibly libertarian-leaning party, it's disturbing to see Forsyth's moralistic impulses guiding policy in this area. No concern about the way a private company is being bullied and harassed by government? Not a peep about the potential censorship issues?
Forsyth claims that, "one only needs to go on Craigslist and look at these kids. There's no question looking at them they're under the age of 18."
Really? And what, exactly, did Forsyth do about it? In fact, if she saw such an ad and did not report it, then she was in clear violation of the Craigslist terms of use.
The reality is that the vast majority of these ads are not illegal and not of the variety that our politicians are now grandstanding about. There is no doubt, however, that there has been, and still are, illegal and improper ads appearing on Craigslist.
In August, for example, a West Vancouver man was charged after posting an ad seeking a sexual encounter with a school-age girl.
In recent years, Calgary police say they've made upwards of 30 such arrests, including some for ads featuring girls as young as 15. As a result, a number of young girls have been rescued.
All this underscores an important question in this debate: what is to be gained from shutting down these ads on Craigslist? Does the problem go away or is it merely pushed out of sight?
Dr. Danah Boyd is a senior researcher at Microsoft Research and a research associate at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She herself is a victim of violence, and has been active for years in working to end violence against women and children.
Surely if going after Craigslist were a means to that end, she would be supportive of it. However, as Dr. Boyd wrote recently, shutting down Craigslist, "achieves the absolute opposite" result. She urges us to think of Craigslist as a "public perch from which law enforcement can watch without being seen."
The visibility of a site like Craigslist makes us more aware of the problem and makes it easier to help victims, Boyd argues.
She's right. Since Craigslist shut down its "erotic services" ads in the U. S, other sites which still offer such ads have seen a major upsurge in traffic.
Rather than solve the problem, shuttering Craigslist merely scatters it -- to other websites, or more disturbingly, the streets.
As the recent ruling from Ontario Superior Court Justice Susan Himel showed us, confining sex workers to the streets makes the profession demonstrably more dangerous.
In the process, the government would also be wrongly censoring those consenting adults seeking a sexual encounter, which suggests that the crusade against Craigslist springs, in part, from a puritanical revulsion to the mere existence of such ads. From there, it's an easy cause for politicians to latch on to, and claim they're "helping children" in the process.
There are children in need of help and more should be done to help them. Shutting down Craigslist helps no one.

 

Bring Back the Death Penalty?

I suppose it comes as no surprise that given the horrific crimes committed by disgraced (and now former) Colonel Russell Williams, that there would be a conversation about returning to the death penalty.

 

I suppose if anyone would be deserving of such a fate, it would be a monster like Williams.

 

As you can see here, here, here, here, here, and here, that discussion is certainly taking place.

 

But for those who believe we should once again institute capital punishment, I would suggest you consider the case of William Mullins-Johnson:

 

The Ontario government has agreed to pay $4.25-million in compensation to William Mullins-Johnson for the 12 years he spent in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of killing his niece.
The payment was announced just over three years after the Ontario Court of Appeal acquitted Mr. Mullins-Johnson and concluded that he was a victim of a miscarriage of justice, based on the flawed findings of controversial pathologist Dr. Charles Smith.
Mr. Mullins-Johnson was acquitted following a review by a panel of pathology experts. During the inquiry, Dr. Smith apologized to Mr. Mullins-Johnson, asking for his forgiveness.

Surely, if we had the death penalty, someone convicted of raping and murdering a 4-year old girl would have been at or near the front of the line.

Science or Panic Behind BPA Decision?

(Don't forget, my daily editorial comment airs weekday mornings at 6:20 with Bruce Kenyon and the Morning News, and again at 12:20pm with Wayne Nelson and Today So Far)
Thursday's editorial comment:

The federal government has added Bisphenol A, or BPA, to Canada's list of toxic substances.

BPA is a chemical used in the production of some plastic containers - it's also used to prevent corrosion on the inside liner of cans of food.

The announcement states that, quote, "Health Canada considers that sufficient evidence relating to human health has been presented to justify the conclusion that BPA is harmful to human life"

If that's the case, then the government is to be applauded for moving so decisively.

However, if that's not the case, then it would certainly put this decision in a very different light and call into question the decision-making process itself.

What's interesting is that Ottawa;s announcement comes just days after the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) declared BPA to be safe.

The EFSA ruled that Denmark's tough restrictions on BPA were not justified based on the scientific evidence.

They declared that, “Following a detailed and comprehensive review of recent scientific literature and studies on the toxicity of BPA at low doses, scientists on the EFSA panel conclude they could not identify any new evidence which would lead them to revise the current Tolerable Daily Intake.”
That panel, which consisted of  21 scientific experts, poured through the toxicological data from 2007 to 2010 in reaching their conclusion.
They find that many of the claims of BPA's harm involve tests on rodents. However, new studies on BPA in primates show that the chemical is eliminated much faster in humans than in rodents.
That also means the rodent models may be significantly overstating the risk of BPA exposure.
The panel concluded that no new study exists that would justify revising the EFSA approach to BPA or taking a tougher stance in regulating or banning the chemical.
It all suggests that Ottawa's conclusion is based on little more than a strict application of the precautionary principle.
Better safe than sorry might sit well with some, but after we get rid of BPA, what's to say its replacement will be any better?

Herald Column: Can Government Save Us From Distracted Drivers?

This week's Calgary Herald column from yours truly looks at the case being made for Alberta's distracted driving law, and what the evidence tells us about whether it will work:

 

...The case for a ban was bolstered in recent weeks by research led by the University of Calgary's Alan Shiell. His study argues that banning cellphone use while driving, including hands-free, would result in thousands of fewer crashes annually, saving an average of 15 lives each year, and millions of dollars. So, on paper anyway, the case for Bill 16 is beyond reproach.
The real-world evidence tells a different story.
Two studies released this year by the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) in the U.S. look at the experience of American states which have banned the use of cellphones while driving or specifically banned texting while driving.
One study examined four jurisdictions which had introduced bans on cellphone use. The study found no change in the month-to-month fluctuation of collision claims after the ban was introduced. What's more, claims rates in neighbouring jurisdictions without such bans were no different.
In a separate study released last month, the HLDI examined four jurisdictions which had banned texting while driving, and none saw a reduction in crashes. Three of the four states actually saw an increase in the number of crashes among younger drivers.
It seems the ban might be part of the problem. The study suggests those texting are more likely to lower their devices out of sight. Driving simulator tests conducted by the HLDI found that heads-up displays were less likely to result in a crash than a head-down display.
Shiell, however, wonders whether these bans were adequately enforced.
What, though, would constitute "adequate enforcement?" What's to say such a concept can even apply to offences such as these? If we expand our ban to hands-free cellphones, how would police be expected to catch such scofflaws?
Would officers need to keep an eye out for suspicious lip movement? Would cellphone records be subpoenaed every time we're unsure about why a driver's mouth was moving?
Bill 16 seems particularly unenforceable. For example, a driver is permitted to use an MP3 player, but it must be programmed ahead of time. If a police officer spots a motorist sporting earbuds, how would this important distinction be discerned?
Even more curious is that the law states drivers "must not hold, view or manipulate an electronic device." Is that to say a driver must not touch or look at his BlackBerry? If your phone were to ring, would it be illegal to look at the call display or to press the "ignore" button?
It would seem the mere presence of an electronic device might be enough to run afoul of this law.
We criminalize drunk driving because of the potential for harm resulting from impairment. If distracted motorists pose a threat to others on the road, then taking a similar approach seems logical.
Let's be cautious in assuming government can wave its wand and make all our problems disappear. There seems to be a notion that the only reason bad things occur is a lack of government will.
We may finally get our distracted driving law. That may be all we get.