MADD Canada pushes for feds to implement 2009 recommendations on impaired driving

MADD Canada, along with a group of impaired driving victims, are sharing concerns with some members of Parliament in Ottawa Thursday, particularly their issues with a lack of progress in implementing a federal committee’s recommendations on ending impaired driving.

The June 2009 report from the Federal Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, Ending Alcohol-Impaired Driving: A Common Approach, included recommendations for provincial and territorial measures that could address the problem in the country.

It also included wider-ranging recommendations, such as coordinating provincial legal drinking ages to curb cross-border impaired driving.

Based on that report, MADD Canada is asking the federal government to work on implementing three measures, including:

• The implementation of random breath testing, which MADD says is a recognized best practice in reducing impaired driving
• Tougher sentences for repeat impaired driving offenders
• Tougher sentences for offenders with BACs (blood alcohol content) in excess of 0.16%

Based on international results, MADD estimated that random breath testing could prevent more than 200 impaired driving-related deaths and more than 14,000 injuries in Canada every year.

“This report was released in 2009 and it contained some tangible ways to reduce impaired driving deaths and injuries, and ways to deal more strongly with those offenders who repeatedly put themselves and everyone around them at great risk,” MADD Canada’s national president Denise Dubyk commented in a statement. “But today, nearly four years later, there has been no move to implement those recommendations.”

At the time the report was completed, the government accepted its recommendations in principle and said it would “consult on a priority basis with the provinces, territories, law enforcement, prosecutors and other stakeholders…with a view to developing a comprehensive set of reforms.”

Since the release of the report, MADD estimates more than 4,100 people have been killed and more than 240,000 injured in impairment-related crashes.