Provincial government to make changes to impaired driving laws

The provincial government will be looking to make changes to impaired driving laws after the Alberta Court of Appeal ruled that suspending an accused drivers’ license before the matter is resolved in court to be unconstitutional.
With the ruling in the R. v Sahaluk case, the province has decided rather than appeal the ruling they will research other legislative models and strategies used elsewhere in Canada to tackle the problem of impaired driving in Alberta.
“The safety of Albertans in communities and on our roads is our top priority,” said Alberta’s Minister of Justice and Solicitor General Kathleen Ganley in a press release Aug. 16.
“We will be looking at other legislative models across the country to see which initiatives have been most effective in saving lives.
“We want to ensure that our laws reduce impaired driving and are also upheld in court,” she said.
The provincial government will also engage key stakeholder groups before bringing a new impaired driving bill forward in Alberta’s Legislature.
MADD Canada CEO Andrew Murie said that he looks forward to working with the province to craft the new legislation.
The current legislation was enacted in 2012 as an amendment to the Traffic Safety Act. In this amendment, drivers with a blood alcohol level of more than 0.08 or who refused to give a breath sample would have their driver’s licence suspended until the charge was resolved.
In it’s ruling, the Court of Appeal has allowed the current law’s driving suspension penalties to remain until May 2018.
This means that police will be able to hand out license suspensions in impaired driving cases.
“Impaired drivers threaten the safety of every other person on the road with potential death or serious injury, and administrative licence suspensions were an immediate way to address the threat,” said Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police representative Chief Const. Roger Chaffin, “We are optimistic that the government will find a legally acceptable resolution to this issue in the very near future.”