Month: April 2017

Canada’s so-called legalization of marijuana comes with several consequences, including the new framework for mandatory random breath testing roadside. But there are other significant consequences that still need to be unpacked in this legislation.
 
Today’s blog post is going to outline a few of the other problematic changes to the alcohol-impaired driving legislation, and particularly those that have received less attention. In this post, I am going to deal with one of the other significant changes: reducing the number of defences available to drivers. This will be part one of a two-part blog post on reducing the defences, as there is a lot to discuss here.  

On Thursday, the Liberal Government revealed its plan for marijuana legalization. Surprising to many was the fact that the Liberals introduced this as part of an omnibus bill that makes amendments to other parts of the Criminal Code, including the impaired driving legislation. Omnibus bills were commonly criticized by them as tactics used by their predecessor to pass bad legislation. These proposed changes also hide some of the more disturbing aspects the Government has introduced in furtherance of its stated goal to legalize marijuana.
 
I am deeply disturbed by changes that the Government has proposed, in particular the proposal to conduct random breath tests of drivers.
 
Over the next few blog posts, I am going to share some of my views on this proposed legislation and why I believe it to be constitutionally deficient.