Who's suing whom?

By Michael Barclay - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 12:23 PM - 0 Comments

British Columbia: A class-action lawsuit was launched against the B.C. government over allegedly improper Breathalyzer tests used after new drinking and driving legislation was introduced last fall. In November, 2,200 roadside Breathalyzers were recalled by the Victoria police chief amid concerns over mis-calibration and faulty readings. The lead plaintiff in the suit had his licence suspended and his car impounded after registering a blood-alcohol level of 0.05, the minimum level for an immediate suspension under the new law.

Saskatchewan: A 24-year-old woman, with the support of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, is suing Correctional Services Canada, claiming that her four-year stint in solitary confinement is unconstitutional. The Civil Liberties Association says there are no limits or objective criteria for placing prisoners in solitary confinement for long terms. Parole Board documents say she has been repeatedly violent in prison.

Ontario: A cyclist who suffered a brain injury after a race held last April is suing the Hamilton Cycling Club for $20 million in damages. He was travelling 40 km/h when he slammed on the brakes to avoid a cluster of competitors on a sharp turn, causing him to be hurled over the handlebars; he spent 3½ months in hospital. In a race with 200 cyclists, his accident was one of a dozen that day. No statement of defence has been filed, although organizers say the route will be altered for next month’s race.

Nova Scotia: A Halifax gambler who voluntarily signed an agreement banning him from the premises of Casino Nova Scotia is suing the establishment for $61,000 for allegedly allowing him to return repeatedly, even more than once a day, with access to the “high-rollers” area and free alcohol. No defence has been filed by the company that owns the casino, Great Canadian Gaming Corporation, which is facing similar lawsuits in British Columbia.

A judgment call

By Colby Cosh - Friday, March 26, 2010 at 12:02 PM - 16 Comments

Photograph by Jack Sullivan/ Getstock

Osgoode Hall law professor James Stribopoulos, currently a visiting scholar at the Melbourne Law School in Australia, is a specialist in criminal procedure. Earlier this month, he accidentally stumbled into an experiment in comparative search-and-seizure law while on his way to tour a penguin habitat with another Canadian colleague. “I was pulled over by the Victoria police during the drive because I had my headlights on (how Canadian of me; they don’t have daytime running lights here),” he writes by email. “Almost immediately, I was required to furnish a breath sample into a roadside Breathalyzer and to provide a saliva sample. The latter is a new test they are deploying here—essentially they scrape some saliva off your tongue and see how it reacts to two chemicals that are supposed to test for cannabis and methamphetamines.” Declared alcohol- and drug-free, and turned loose, Stribopoulos and his passenger naturally wondered: could such a thing ever happen in Canada?

Last year, the House of Commons justice committee recommended that the Criminal Code be amended to permit random police stops of drivers for mandatory roadside Breathalyzer testing. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson favours the idea, and on Feb. 16 the federal Justice Department issued a discussion paper formally inviting public feedback. But the relevant section of the paper makes no explicit mention of an important obstacle to what the Australians call RBT (random breath testing): the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

RBT was relatively simple to introduce in Australia, which had and has no equivalent to the Charter, in the 1980s. (Criminal law is reserved to the states under the Australian constitution. The state of Victoria, where Stribopoulos was stopped, adopted a human rights charter in 2008, but it covers only new laws and provides no avenue of legal action for private citizens.) In Canadian law, random vehicle stops are recognized as a form of Charter-violating arbitrary detention, but the Supreme Court has ruled—most notably in the 1990 Ladouceur decision, which the discussion paper highlights—that such checks are “reasonable limits” to personal freedom under Section 1.

Continue…

Curbing drunk drivers is harder than you think

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 at 10:10 AM - 32 Comments

Their actions are indefensible: Roger Walsh, the 57-year-old Quebecer sentenced to life in prison this September for running over and killing wheelchair-bound Anee Khudaverdian in 2008—his 19th impaired-driving conviction. Andrew Anthony Charles, a 25-year-old from Vancouver Island, recently handed three years for an alcohol-soaked April 2005 crash that took the lives of his girlfriend, Doreen Joseph, 20, and cousin, Glen Charles Jr., 23. Wladyslaw Bilski, a 49-year-old drunk from Chatham, Ont., who, earlier this fall, got four years, one for each of the elderly women he killed—Marion Dawson, Jean Ripley, Verna Neaves and Bernice Phillips—when he plowed his minivan head-on into their car as they returned home from a November 2007 church supper. Bilski’s blood alcohol level was more than three times the legal limit.

The list of offenders, and their innocent victims, goes on. Anyone with doubts that drunk driving is still a problem in Canada need only scan the headlines. In an era where the rates of all types of crime have dropped to 30-year lows, and our roads are safer than ever, the sometimes lethal combination of alcohol and automobile remains a stubborn phenomenon. In 2006 (the most recent statistics available), 907 Canadians were killed in crashes involving a drinking driver. Thousands more were injured.

Little wonder that federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson last month announced his intention to yet again toughen the country’s impaired-driving laws. Endorsing the June report of the all-party House of Commons justice committee, Nicholson said he wants to give police broad new powers to conduct random roadside breath tests. (As the law currently stands, officers must have a reasonable suspicion—an admission of drinking, or possible indications of impairment like the odour of alcohol, or erratic driving—to use the Breathalyzer.) RBT, as the random checks are known, is now in place in several European nations, and has been a long-standing practice in Australia, where millions are waved to the side of the road, asked to board “Booze Buses,” and blow every year. It’s a change that would put Canada, already home to some of the world’s most stringent sanctions for impaired driving, at the forefront of a global war. Continue…

Idea alert

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 5, 2009 at 4:25 PM - 28 Comments

Rob Nicholson reportedly raises the prospect of random breathalyzer tests.

The federal justice minister is considering a new law that would allow police to conduct random breathalyzer tests on drivers, regardless of whether they suspect motorists have been drinking.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson raised the prospect recently at a meeting of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, according to MADD chief executive Andrew Murie.

If random testing were to be adopted, it would be a major change to Canada’s 40-year-old breathalyzer legislation, which stipulates that police may only administer a test if they suspect a driver has been drinking.