The federal government has released a discussion paper that proposes the following amendments to the Criminal Code :
- Legislatively expressing the purposes of the transport offence legislation
- Linking minimum fines for first impaired driving offenders to BAC
- Random breath testing
- Eliminating the “bolus drinking” defence and restricting the intervening drink defence
- Placing limits on disclosure
- Eliminating or limiting the right to counsel prior to an Approved Instrument test.
The CCLA will be participating in this consultation and submit a brief to the government. It will seek to ensure that Charter rights to counsel are not unduly undermined and that no additional coercive powers are granted to law enforcement unless the necessity for such additional powers has been demonstrated and proper accountability imeasures have been implemented. In particular, the CCLA is concerned about the possibility of abuses that exist with the additional powers to randomly stop any driver, even without any suspicion of wrongdoing, to submit to a breath test.
