Mr. Speaker, drunk driving is a public safety issue that deserves more of our attention. That applies to our assessment of whether the legislative measures in this bill can help eliminate this scourge.

It goes without saying that enhancing road safety involves several factors, from the quality of physical infrastructure to Criminal Code provisions penalizing drunk drivers.

I would like to go over some key numbers that illustrate the devastating impact of this scourge on families in Quebec and Canada. Some 5.4 million Canadians say that they have a family member or friend who has driven drunk or caused an accident. We know that with this type of statistic, when people talk about a friend or an acquaintance, they are sometimes talking about themselves, but because they do not want to incriminate themselves, they say they know someone. That number is still astronomical.

Nearly a quarter of the Canadian population has a family member or close friend who has been a victim of a drunk driving accident. According to Transport Canada, alcohol was a factor in nearly 30% of traffic accident fatalities from 2003 to 2005.

Unfortunately, my riding, Trois-Rivières, has troubling statistics on this too. According to a study that looked at June of 2013, the Trois-Rivières police service made about one arrest a day, 28 that month to be precise. Impaired driving is still the leading criminal cause of death in Canada.

These statistics show how important it is to examine this issue. I support moving forward with the bill introduced by my colleague, the member for Prince Albert, so that the committee can look at it, study its impact on sentence length and ensure that the provisions comply with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Canadian criminal law.

The Criminal Code of Canada has very strict laws and sanctions for impaired driving. Specifically, several Canadian provinces have in place a three-tier system based on blood alcohol content. The first tier is zero milligrams of alcohol for young and novice drivers. The second tier allows for administrative sanctions in some cases for a BAC over 0.05 milligrams. Lastly, drivers with a BAC over 0.08 milligrams are liable to sanctions under the Criminal Code of Canada.

Furthermore, new provisions were added in the Criminal Code and came into force on July 2, 2008. This means that there are now nine distinct offences related to impaired driving. Unfortunately, despite the introduction of more coercive measures, the Canadian Police Association recognizes the challenges faced on the ground in terms of combatting this scourge.

In addition to the human cost related to this phenomenon, the average cost of impaired driving accidents in Canada from 1999 to 2006 has been estimated at $1.9 billion per year. This estimate does not include any of the social costs that result from those offences.

With respect to Bill C-590, it would be interesting to explore whether reducing mandatory minimum prison sentences for impaired driving causing death is the right thing to do here. It would be useful to debate this, because these mandatory minimum sentences are shorter than existing sentences. Reducing mandatory minimum sentences for impaired driving causing death could prove counterproductive. According to the jurisprudence, minimum penalties tend to become the default penalty. In other words, minimum penalties become the norm, rather than being reserved for the least serious cases or those where there are mitigating factors.

Accordingly, it would be entirely reasonable to expect defence lawyers to ask for the minimum penalty, unless the crown can prove that the defendant's crime deserves a punishment that will serve as an example.

The federal Criminal Code is not enough to address the risks to road safety caused by impaired drivers. The duty to enforce the law in this area is shared by the federal, provincial and territorial governments.

There are a number of solutions that we can implement incrementally to deter impaired drivers from getting behind the wheel and endangering others. One of the deterrents that can be implemented is random breathalyzer tests for blood alcohol concentrations.

In Ireland, the Road Safety Authority believes that random breathalyzer testing has led to a 23% reduction in the number of highway deaths. That is something that could be considered. This last measure is just one of many options available to us to effectively fight delinquent behaviour.

To introduce an effective measure that will eradicate this scourge, we have to consider the fact that drunk driving is the manifestation of social problems that coercive measures alone cannot address. By adopting this approach, we could transform our legislative framework and make it preventive as well as punitive.

Preventing impaired driving must be based on campaigns that look at much more than just drunk driving and also raise awareness among drivers of the link between alcoholism, violence and risky behaviour.

Impaired driving is above all a social problem. We have to consider ways to prevent risky behaviours and create public policies with the ultimate objective of reducing risky behaviours in our society—including impaired driving—rather than creating a legislative framework that depends solely on coercion. Alcoholism does lead to crime, but we must remember that coercion can make it worse.

Preventive social policies, such as those that seek to address the socio-economic determinants of alcoholism, produce more effective results in the long term by taking a holistic approach to the problem, which requires the intervention of health professionals, social workers and members of police forces.

In closing, I support the bill introduced by the member for Prince Albert. I believe that sending it to committee will provide the opportunity for more in-depth analysis of how to achieve the desired results.

We should also be looking to technological advancements for solutions. For example, I am thinking about car locks that are opened with a number combination instead of a key. They make it more difficult to open the door if the driver has had one too many and is not fully coherent. Opening the door requires some thought, and the door is prevented from opening if it is not unlocked within a given time frame.

The Criminal Code, new technology and international experience in this area should all be part of our collective thought process as we determine how we can put an end to this problem, which has disastrous consequences for families in Quebec and Canada.

Robert Aubin

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