Better Late Than Never....

Finally, it looks as though Canada is prepared to recognize the deadly scourge that drinking and driving represents to the community at large. Not that there haven't been ample representations to government. It's the current, Conservative government that has undertaken to make alterations to the Criminal Code for that very purpose, to toughen up the pallidly existing and obviously inadequate laws. Canada has some catching up to do, to reach parity with other western countries in tackling this serious societal problem.

With these amendments to the Criminal Code it will become easier for police to obtain blood samples post-accident, where it is suspected that alcohol has been involved. With that evidence in hand it should reduce the current proclivity of defendants and their lawyers to use Charter arguments in avoiding conviction and penalties. "The legislation will make it more difficult for those who drink, drive and kill to escape liability" opined a law professor at the University of Western Ontario.

That same law professor, Robert Solomon, also happens to be director of legal policy for MADD Canada, who points out that other countries whose impaired-driving laws are more stringent than ours are always rather taken aback at our perplexedly lax attitudes. This, despite that over 1,200 people across the country died in impaired-driving accidents according to the latest statistics available, for the year 2005.

Which doesn't take into account the large numbers of people involved in such accidents whose lives and prospects for the future have been irretrievably altered beyond their darkest imaginings. Those who have been injured, and now suffer major physical impacts through spinal injuries, head injuries, loss of limbs and with these, loss of future employment prospects, along with the opportunity to live normal lives.

To put things into perspective, in that same year where statistics were last reported, double the number of people were killed through impaired-driving accidents as opposed to the number who were murdered. That's a lesson in semantics; a car is a powerfully dangerous instrument when it's under the control of someone incapable of actually controlling it. What results is manslaughter.

People who make the decision to get behind the wheel of a vehicle when they're no longer in complete control of their thinking and assessing and manipulative processes are gambling with the lives of other people. They're potential murderers, by default. All too often Canadian courts have been too lenient with this type of social situation, considering it a mere infraction of the law. Simply because so many people drink and so many people drink and drive.

And this leniency sends a mixed message to the public. That it's quite all right to imbibe and consider yourself to have done so sufficiently moderately to control a motor vehicle. And that if, in any event, you happen to become involved in a bit of an accident, it's no big deal. You're just doing what everyone else does. Somehow, people never seem to be able to anticipate that there's a grim possibility of things going really, really wrong.

So when a motorist who just happens to be alcohol-impaired is involved in a serious accident causing death, that's a dreadful outcome as a result of a casual shrugging off of personal responsibility as a mature adult. Yet the penalty upon conviction is more often closer to a slap on the wrist than justice. Prison sentences, if they're imposed, are rarely for more than four or five years. Not all that much of a deterrent for some repeat offenders.

"It is the number one criminal cause of death in this country, yet we have this attitude that boys will be boys. Why do we make excuses for drink drivers?", asks Mr. Solomon rather rhetorically. Responding to his own query by suggesting that historically there've just been too many "technical loopholes" that lawyers are quick to take advantage of.

As, for example, someone of the social status and moral authority invested in the wife of one of our former prime ministers. Margaret Trudeau, clearly inebriated, operating a motor vehicle, and adamantly insisting that her rights had been violated when she was taken into custody and a test taken of her blood-alcohol levels, because she hadn't been given the option to call her lawyer. Two Breathalyzer tests had indicated levels far above permissible.

Her actions in this instance were nothing less than contemptible. Yet here she is, years after the event, finally admitting in public that she should not have been acquitted of impaired driving. "I shouldn't have got off. I was over the limit", she said. After her lawyer had successfully argued her case. And following an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that she was stopped for an improper purpose and her Charter rights were violated.

That's rather nasty manipulation of the criminal justice system. This woman should have apologized for her decision to get behind the wheel of her car when she was not in full control of her faculties, mental and physical. And through that process potentially endangering others on the road, beside herself. That a sense of guilt born of an inbred knowledge of right and wrong finally compelled her to admit her error, is to her credit.

That this country is finally prepared to begin the process of getting justifiably tough with those who think nothing of flouting the law and endangering the public is long overdue.