Drunk driving to be largely decriminalized in Alberta in 2018

[jayswin]

I believe PepsiFree is pretty contrarian by nature, so this may just be an example of that, but yeah that some pretty rough stuff. Like CliffFletcher and Corsi mentioned this always happens in democratic nations as they age. The younger generations lose site of why due process and constitutional rights are so vital in society because they've only experienced a world with them.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

It’s not a point I place a lot of importance on, because I think the instance you and others are describing would be rare enough that it’s not worth worrying about.

The proposed system seems better than the current system to me, and while neither is perfect, I just don’t think the risk of a sober person getting pulled over by a bad cop, getting falsely accused of impaired driving without any evidence (I.e. no breathalyzer, or two faulty breathalyzer), and punished on the spot is anything more than minute.

You can look at pretty much any law and think of a scenario where it would be ineffective or poorly applied, but unless the chances of that are more than minute, then I don’t think you worry about it.

Hi acknowledge your view. I see where you're coming from but disgaree. These are the stats with due process: http://www.calgary.ca/cps/Documents/...t_20170630.pdf

That's just CPS.

Those numbers are far too high to also make the police the prosecution, defence, judge, and jury.

Also, every single example and scenario given in this thread has been at a check point not someone being pulled over. Ultimately that doesn't change the issue with the legislation itself but you are (I believe unintentionally) straw manning the argument.

[Zulu29]

Originally Posted by transplant99

Sure but I also get a court date to dispute it without losing thousands of dollars , possibly my job and having insurance rates jacked up for future years because my license was suspended.....by a roadside cop.

This is terrible legislation, which should surprise no one considering who is implementing it.

I think it’s important to note that this is targeting behaviour which results in many unnecessary deaths on Canada’s roads each year. Something needed to be done to stem that particular behaviour. A traditional criminal impaired driving investigation can take up to 3 hours to complete, an IRP can be done in a third of the time. Also, governments have started to deem impaired driving as an administrative offence, it would appear this is a modernization of inneffective laws/court systems.

At the end of the day it is not a hard decision to not drink and drive. It’s a completely selfish and dangerous decision.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Weitz

This is pathetic.

I’m all for the pile-on of posters taking shots about this being some contrarian or age related thing, even if I think my reasoning is sound enough beyond that, but comments like this make this board worse.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Don't kid yourself - citizens increasingly have no problem at all giving up due process. The egregious abuses of government and judicial authority have largely faded from our living memory, and many people no longer really understand why these safeguards were set up in the first place. Or they only imagine the bad people - other people - falling afoul of authority.

but can you blame them? Life is pretty good, and a good life is mostly what most of us have ever known, really.

[cal_guy]

Innocent until proven guilty in a court of law only applies when there are "true penal consequence". That's why health inspectors are allowed to close restaurants if they find mice, or when the TSB grounds an airline after a crash, or when the Alberta Securities Commission bans a person from trading securities, or when the NEB sets aside Burnaby bylaws for Transmountain. These are regulatory action that intended to be corrective rather than punishment.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Originally Posted by Zulu29

I think it’s important to note that this is targeting behaviour which results in many unnecessary deaths on Canada’s roads each year. Something needed to be done to stem that particular behaviour. A traditional criminal impaired driving investigation can take up to 3 hours to complete, an IRP can be done in a third of the time. Also, governments have started to deem impaired driving as an administrative offence, it would appear this is a modernization of inneffective laws/court systems.

At the end of the day it is not a hard decision to not drink and drive. It’s a completely selfish and dangerous decision.

There are several instances where the court demands a quick turn around time. Child protection cases, bail hearings to name two. Set up a DUI court and mandate a speedy trial.

That's a better option than giving police the unchecked ability to revoke someone's license and potentially harm their livelihood.

[WhiteTiger]

I find myself struggling with this, because I view driving as a privilege, not a right...and an over-granted and too-easy-to-obtain privilege at that. I feel that if there were more harsh consequences, folks would take the privilege less for granted than it is.

I'm not sure where I stand on this one, honestly. I'd be happy with unclogging the fighting of it out of the courts...but I wonder if, as Maritime Q-Scout suggested, a better way to do that is to dedicate a court TO intoxicated driving fighting.

Which sounds really sad, that we have so much possible intoxicated driving that it's such a drain on societal resources.

[transplant99]

I think a dedicated traffic court is long overdue. No reason not to have one, where all of defense lawyers, crown prosecutors and judges can cut their teeth so to speak.

Frees up the superior courts for strictly the more serious offenses.

[Ducay]

Originally Posted by transplant99

I think a dedicated traffic court is long overdue. No reason not to have one, where all of defense lawyers, crown prosecutors and judges can cut their teeth so to speak.

Frees up the superior courts for strictly the more serious offenses.

Problem is DUI is a fairly serious (and should be) offense. Banishing it to a "kiddie" court or otherwise still doesn't remove the drain on the system since you're still occupying judges and prosecutors for X amount of time, and making it into a quicker conveyor belt-of-a-court removes the ability for the crown to do their job as prosecutors. I'm no legal expert, but I already thought these things were being pushed through the courts as quickly and with as little fanfare as possible given there are so many avenues for offenders to prolong or get "out" (potentially rightfully so given due process exists for a reason).

This extra-judicial answer is hardly an answer when you're taking away due process for something with very material consequences & punishment.

Real answer is we need more judges

[TheAlpineOracle]

Pepsifree coming in with an opinion contrary to 99% of the general public and arguing it relentless for pages for their own personal enjoyment....... I couldn’t have seen that coming, not a common occurrence.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by WhiteTiger

Which sounds really sad, that we have so much possible intoxicated driving that it's such a drain on societal resources.

It is dismaying that it's such a common occurrence that it takes up much of our legal resources. But we should also recognize that we're doing something right here - it's not as though drunk driving hasn't decreased in the last 30 years.



The problem is that we've pretty much reached the limit of what we can achieve with public awareness and social norms. Now we're down to a hard core of very young and dumb drivers, and older alcoholics, who can't be influenced by appeals to being responsible and law-abiding citizens. The only way to deter people who are still driving drunk is to catch them in the act. And that's very expensive. The number of check stops set up in Calgary in a week is pitifully low, because police are very expensive. So are prosecutors and judges. Basically, we don't want to spend the money it would take to catch and prosecute the morons who still drive drunk.

Seeing as we don't want to spend the money, I don't expect any dramatic decrease in impaired driving to happen until self-driving cars take over the roads. Which can't happen soon enough.

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by Ducay

Problem is DUI is a fairly serious (and should be) offense. Banishing it to a "kiddie" court or otherwise still doesn't remove the drain on the system since you're still occupying judges and prosecutors for X amount of time, and making it into a quicker conveyor belt-of-a-court removes the ability for the crown to do their job as prosecutors. I'm no legal expert, but I already thought these things were being pushed through the courts as quickly and with as little fanfare as possible given there are so many avenues for offenders to prolong or get "out" (potentially rightfully so given due process exists for a reason).

This extra-judicial answer is hardly an answer when you're taking away due process for something with very material consequences & punishment.

Real answer is we need more judges

There is no reason a dedicated traffic court can't have a DUI section though where the seriousness of the offense is treated as such.

Then guilt and punishment should would be decided by those trained and with a depth of knowledge and not on a roadside.

Really that is all I, and many others, have been saying.

[TheAlpineOracle]

I have no problems with very harsh DUI penalties. Anyone stupid enough to get behind the wheel while intoxicated deserves to have the book thrown at them. I’m actually of the opinion that the legal limit should be nil. Gets rid of any ambiguity and risk.

If you are going to have a legal limit though, there has to be due process. Completely unacceptable to be at the officers disgression. These people are human beings the same as us and bias is always going to come into their decisions. There needs to be a system of checks and balances.

A good example of this is the “benefits” police officers give to other officers. Does anyone actually believe they’d get the same treatment we would? My friend is in law enforcement and I’ve actually been in situations with him where he whips the badge out and everything magically clears up whereas I would get a fine.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by TheAlpineOracle

Pepsifree coming in with an opinion contrary to 99% of the general public and arguing it relentless for pages for their own personal enjoyment....... I couldn’t have seen that coming, not a common occurrence.

BC’s law has been around for 8 years and if 99% of people disagreed with it, it probably wouldn’t have lasted this long. In addition, it’s not like the current system is the shining example of judicial process, when they can already punish you for blowing below the legal limit and take your license until after your court date (which could be and usually is much longer than 3 months). It’s essentially an automatic punishment already, the only major change is that you get to fight the criminal charges, which in the new legislation there would be none.

Let’s keep the discourse a little higher than useless pile-on posts though. If you want to disagree take a page from Maritime or whiteout and actually do so respectfully.

[TheAlpineOracle]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

BC’s law has been around for 8 years and if 99% of people disagreed with it, it probably wouldn’t have lasted this long. In addition, items not like the current system is the shining example of judicial process, when they can already punish you for blowing below the legal limit and take your license until after your court date (which could be and usually is much longer than 3 months). It’s essentially an automatic punishment already, the only major change is that you get to fight the criminal charges, which in the new legislation there would be none.

Let’s keep the discourse a little higher than useless pile-on posts though. If you want to disagree take a page from Maritime or whiteout and actually do so respectfully.

It’s not a pile-on post. It’s an observation based on historical tendencies. Jayswin more eloquently posted it above. You disagree for the sake of disagreeing. It’s to the point where I can look at a thread title, know if you’ll be involved in the thread, and know what your position will be without even actually opening the thread.

Nothing wrong with it, disagreement is part of a message board. I just don’t believe your positions are genuine. I think you have a passion for debating and take the contrary position every time and run with it.

Anyways enough with me derailing this thread.

[GGG]

Being on the side of the latest Supreme Court ruling isn't a contrarian position.

[TheFlamesVan]

Originally Posted by TheAlpineOracle

It’s not a pile-on post. It’s an observation based on historical tendencies. Jayswin more eloquently posted it above. You disagree for the sake of disagreeing. It’s to the point where I can look at a thread title, know if you’ll be involved in the thread, and know what your position will be without even actually opening the thread.

Nothing wrong with it, disagreement is part of a message board. I just don’t believe your positions are genuine. I think you have a passion for debating and take the contrary position every time and run with it.

Anyways enough with me derailing this thread.

So? Prove him wrong.

[troutman]

I think that the Drug Treatment Court project has been successful:

http://calgarydrugtreatmentcourt.org

We provide a pre-sentence justice alternative for drug addicted offenders that integrates justice, health services and treatment to restore the lives of addicts and empower them to be productive members of the community.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by GGG

Being on the side of the latest Supreme Court ruling isn't a contrarian position.

It can't really be stressed enough that that was a different law. It was also held to be partially unconstitutional. The BC Government takes the view that the newer version of its legislation fixes those problems, and they may even be right, but that hasn't actually been tested. Neither the current law in BC nor any of Alberta's legislation has been evaluated by the Supreme Court of Canada. Honestly, the fact that the government in Alberta didn't bother to appeal the ABCA ruling earlier this year suggests they knew they were likely to lose if they'd done so. So far, it's the Province that has been offside the Supreme Court's ruling, which is why they were given a year to fix the law.

The most you can say is that per the Supreme Court, some immediate roadside prohibitions are acceptable, provided the legislation takes appropriate steps to ensure that peoples' rights are not violated.