The NDP is proposing a bill that would allow cops to test drivers’ alcohol levels without having any reasonable grounds.
42 Replies to “MADD With Power”
And he Liberals, they’re going to stand up for Pierre’s Charter……….right?
yup, that sounds like something the NDP would do to try to get more votes.
They’re political whores.
Politicians of all stripes have been sucking up to MADD for far too long. Of course, they do so in large part because because the media beats the drum for the organization’s “absolute moral authority”. They have become the Cindy Sheehans of liquor control. Thus, this insufferable group of scolds pushes the government of Alberta into sanctioning blood alcohol levels lower than those that violate the Criminal Code, and the Brahmi PMB opens another front on law-abiding citizens.
If you consider those incidents involving impaired driving and death or serious injury, most of them are caused by people driving while blind drunk. Organizations like MADD and their enablers seem to be far more concerned about unrestricted harassment of responsible drinkers than holding serial drunk drivers accountable for their actions.
It is difficult to push back against activist totalitarians who are fronted by women whose children have been killed. Politicians will never challenge them, but somebody has to do it.
“…Politicians will never challenge them, but somebody has to do it…”
Ah, yes. The hard-to-find, mystical to the point of mythical, “somebody”. As in:
“somebody” should put a stop to sex-ed for grade one students,
“somebody” should do something about the government designating private property as conservation lands
“somebody has to do something about our electricity bills
Roseberry Old Friend, it’s not going to happen in this country. Nobody – farmers, parents, bar-owners – has the balls/brains/concern for our Country’s future to get off their arses and do something.
Law maker/enforces who display contempt or ignorance of basic civil/legal rights and due process of law should be open to review of their fitness for office. This obsession with statist socialists for Orwellian pre-crime assumption/accusation/punishment (they make the process or proof of innocence the punishment for gulity and innocent alike) is one of the most dangerous precedents we have seen yet in legislative meams.
Two words for these Orwellian goose-steppers – “JUST CAUSE”! Where is the rquired reasonable suspicion – the burden of proof, the need to prove mens rea? Has the charter been repealed?
This type of blanket presumed guit legislating should be extinguished with a political and legal sledgehammen wielded by an outraged indignant public – but first we have to wake up enough of the zombie horde to realize they are being herded over a cliff by those who presume to be concerned with their safety.
This is a great idea. /sarc
How about putting a sobriety checkpoint outside the Chamber of Parliament for a day? Test them all. You might be surprised at the results for your MP and his/her/its staff.
Question for Shiny Pony…and the test for driving impaired while under the influence of THC is????
MADD has been hijacked by the old Women’s Christian Temperance Union.
(WCTU).
MADD recently set up a “toll booth” in our city to collect donations. I told them (politely) to self-fornicate.
The biggest problem I see with MADD or any of these government lobby groups is that they are trying to “save lives”, and so will pursue any measure to do it. They are C.S. Lewis’s “tyrants for your own good”, as somebody reminded us on another thread.
The difficulty is, they think people die in wrecks because we have the wrong -laws-. “If only the government would listen to us, nobody would die!”
The truth is that government physically does not have the power to prevent ALL accidents, or even to prevent ALL drunk driving. It cannot be done.
It does however have the power to make everybody miserable, which it is now doing to shut MADD up.
If MADD continued to use their moral authority to encourage voluntary societal change, their time would be better spent.
Why would they do this? We all know, that it is SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN, that punishment does not reduce a behavior. It only increases it. Therefore, we should probably stop with fines and prison, and go more for therapy, and kindness.
Why is the NDP so against science and so pro-regressive approaches? Do they believe in Santa Claus, or Justin Trudeau as well?
A socialist dictatorship one little law at a time. All for our own good of course.
Quite frankly I think being able to drive a car is a right under freedom of mobility, and I damn well pay my share to enjoy that right. The only people who try and tell me otherwise are neo-fascist leftists who have a hatred of the private automobile and me excising my right to self determine to go wherever I feel like it whenever I want without inviting 20 hitchhikers into my car.
“it is SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN, that punishment does not reduce a behavior”
So, should prisons be emptied and rapists/murderers be set free?
Drunk driving Maggie Trudeau’s lawyer could drive a swerving constitutional truck through that ####.
Driving is a right, not a privilege. Privileges are granted by the elites to the peasants.
All of us who pay for the roads through taxes have the right to use them, this harpy could just as well tell us after buying software that using that software is a privilege, not a right.
Roseberry said: “If you consider those incidents involving impaired driving and death or serious injury, most of them are caused by people driving while blind drunk.”
Yes, this. No scientific study determined that .08 BAL(blood alcohol level) causes impairment and the harpies at MADD have been lobbying for a few years to lower the BAL to .05.(for which there is similarly no scientific study)
bitterclinger said: “MADD has been hijacked by the old Women’s Christian Temperance Union.”(WCTU).
Yes. Forget what the Phantom says about this issue, their goal is not laws for safer roads, it is alcohol prohibition. They do not want people to legally be allowed to drink any alcohol at all, drinking being but another ‘privilege’ which we peons are allowed by the elites.
The problem with THC testing was delineated in some detail in the latest New Yorker. The concentrations are ridiculously small – nanograms/ml!! – and while for occasional users, THC is cleared from their system within hours, for habitual users, the concentration is more or less permanent. However, that doesn’t mean that the habitual user is ‘stoned’ at the time.
Gee, do you think that they might go back to the old tests – can you walk a straight line, can you touch the tip of your nose, recite the alphabet backwards, etc. – that actually measured how impaired your faculties were, rather than apply an arbitrary level of BAC?
And to the philtroll: It’s not that we’re advocating driving drunk, you imbecile. We are against being required, at any time, and for no apparent reason (that is what “without cause” means) to prove to the authorities that we are in accordance with their arbitrary rules. What else do you propose, philtroll? Should the CRA have agents on the streets, demanding proof that all our taxes have been paid? Recent R.I.D.E. statistics are on the order of 1 million drivers stopped, 100 impaired charges laid; I’m pretty sure the percentage of people with outstanding tax bills is higher than .01%. Or do you, like all your neo-fascist friends, imagine some new East Germany with Stasi at every corner, demanding to see your ‘papers’ and ensuring that everyone, everywhere walks along your narrow, and narrow-minded, pre-determined path? Dolt.
Why doesn’t Phil stop being a stupid lying asshole. People here aren’t in lockstep with anything, you’ve trolled here often enough to see that. Nobody has a problem with driving sober you literacy challenged moron, they have a problem with being searched without cause.
Roseberry said: “If you consider those incidents involving impaired driving and death or serious injury, most of them are caused by people driving while blind drunk.”
I want to touch on this one again. Despite the statistics which MADD or anyone else have which originate from the police(all police are politicized), very few road accidents can truthfully be dumped on the doorstep of alcohol consumption.
Bad driving habits are rife these days and government has no intention of regulating changes which will improve the situation, especially if the insurance industry isn’t spurring government in a particular direction on some specific issue like the distraction of cell phones.(you don’t see the insurance industry donating huge sums to MADD)
MADD is political, period.
I’m going to write my MP and demand that their charitable status be revoked based on this appearance with an NDP MP endorsing this political measure.
Pretty much the same ignorance and bully tactics used by the libs and cops under the Firearms Act.
Reductio ad Absurdum:
Imagine the lives saved by reducing the maximum highway speed to 25 km/hr with vehicle seizure the penalty for non compliance.
Roseberry has it exactly correct. Our lenient Canadian justice system will not deal harshly with individuals who continue to drive while drunk. MADD like any good political organization takes the path of least resistance and demands that everyone be punished for the failings of our courts.
MADD has to fine a way to survive now that they are a bloated organization with everyone at the trough. Just like Greenpeace has to find a way to survive. Etc. You see the pattern.
These people all make sick. They add no value to society, yet suck money like vacuum cleaners, and restrict freedoms like communists.
Tell that fat Aussie pig, who needs a hair but and who apparently lives in fear of being hit by a drunk driver, to go back to Australia where he will be safer.
Well … Obama’s NHTSB is doing it right now across the US….
“The NDP is proposing a bill that would allow cops to test drivers’ alcohol levels without having any reasonable grounds.”
Well, of course they are.
I guess this guy doesn’t realize we already have “ride” checkpoints which are operated without reasonable grounds, but are considered a “benefit to society” so much so that the SCC supported it. I don’t enjoy the thought of what happens in some US states when exactly this happens now, I remember back in Indiana in the early 00’s that this was going on. Went all the way to the SCoUS and the law was tossed out for infringing on the 4th.
I don’t expect this bill will pass, but if it does. I don’t expect that it will take long for it to hit the SCC either, there’s already exceptional leeway given with a charter exemption. And I hazard that the SCC will make the point that if the police find that it’s “that much of an issue” that they increase the number of officers doing RIDE checkpoints.
Gawd, the police would love this. Instead of being ambush predators, waiting for their prey to slip up as they pass an unexpected school zone,they can graduate to active hunter. My son, because of his age and vehicle pulls over and quickly exits the car, if he notices that a cop seems interested in him. They don’t need much reason, and it’s pretty easy to allege something like a rolling stop, and impossible to fight it. But, of course, it’s all for the children.
The NDP,Liberals,police,and all others who love to demonstrate the power of the State, will be glad to run roadblocks 24/7 complete with unwarranted breathalyzer tests, to grind the peasants down to complete compliance.
This is the ugly truth behind the activists who always claim it’s for our own good. Our “good” is immaterial,it’s about power,the right to remove our inherent freedoms and subjugate them to State authority.
They’re f***ing communists, by any definition.
MADD is mad period, they’re right off rails. In the past I have donated to them but they’ve become a bit too big for their boots, not another nickle from me. Besides, what good are they doing, who are they helping? There are and always will be idiots who will drink and drive, no one is in favour of that but MADD money isn’t going stop it, we have the police forces to go into schools and use TV and radio to get the message out, we pay them already.
Well for sure such an act would restore the publics faith in the police.
As parasitic thieves with a govt protected monopoly.
Rights and responsibilities, use of infrastructure built with our money is our right, driving is a privilege? Ok employment as a bureaucrat is a privilege not a right, therefore there shall be no public service unions.
Arbitrary firings are quite OK ?
After all arbitrary accusation of guilt seems acceptable to MADD, the NDP and their supporters.
“Accept the truth. It may one day Liberalate you.”
There you are, Phil. Fixed it for you.
MADD is not the problem. The problem here in my little province of NB is that drunk drivers get off if the dotting of the ‘i’s and the crossing of the ‘t’s regarding language rights are not letter perfect. A Francophone drunk driver has a high chance of beating the
rap if he is caught in the English majority areas.
Between this and the Conservative’s proposal to allow cops to take DNA from anyone we’re boned.
Phil: old Sioux word for ‘head smashed in buffalo jump’.
I wonder if the NDP/Liberals would support something like this if it was for a roadside THC test?
It’s a private members bill which means it will probably go nowhere. Every politician has to make his/her mark , much like a dog is obligated to pee on a fire hydrant. MADD is now something like the Terry Fox run. It’s a business with cushy offices, a large staff of drones and money for nothing ’cause the twits are free. Anyway, it’s the NDP, who will do anything to get onto the media since shiny pony has hogged the lime light. I doubt if this will get far.
KevinB, you’re right that performance based testing should be the norm. I’d much rather have an alcoholic driving with his usual 0.8 EtOH level where he functions normally than with a 0.07 level where he’s in danger of having an alcohol withdrawal seizure while driving and being far more of a danger on the road.
What the laws totally ignore is tolerance to a drug. A first time pot smoker shouldn’t be driving afterwards as should a person with chronic pain taking their first dose of a strong opiate. However, for chronic pot smokers and opiate users, the brain develops tolerance to the effects of the drug to the extent that they are perfectly competent to perform such activities as driving. There are people with chronic pain conditions who are employed in safety critical positions while on doses of opiates that would put an opiate naive individual into immediate respiratory arrest. The criteria for such individuals to be employed in a safety critical position is to be on a stable dose of an opiate and have developed tolerance to the negative cognitive effects.
Why EtOH is not treated the same way is a mystery. People who drink regularly are tolerant to the negative effects of EtOH and can safely drive at 0.08% BAC and above depending on how much they drink. Some experiments I did in medical school showed that reaction time decreased with increasing blood alcohol concentrations in a majority of medical students who drank regularly and only went up in light drinkers. This was a very unpopular finding for the prof who taught the course who assumed I’d find a monotonic increase in reaction times as a function of BAC. Explains why it used to take me 6 beer before I could parallel park when I first started driving; something I was totally unable to do while sober.
Actually, the existence of individuals in safety critical positions on large doses of opiates is likely what one needs to fight the prohibitionist scum that inhabit MADD in court. What one needs is objective performance data on an individual with a given BAC and, if the objective performance data is equal to or surpasses that of a sober driver then it is completely illogical to charge them with a crime.
If one is dealing with BAC levels allowed in individuals, one would have a very complex age and driving experience stratified table where teenage drivers would be allowed 0 as they’re not of drinking age and being drunk and driving means they’ve committed an illegal act. In young males BAC levels would likely be less than 0.08 whereas in middle aged males who have a long history of drinking and driving, BAC levels would be substantially greater than 0.08 depending on performance. Once one gets into the 65+ age group, acceptable BAC levels would start to drop as this is the age group where drinking catches up to people who attempt to drink like they did when they were 25 years old. There’s lots of evidence for such a complex stratification, but the simplest thing to do would be to have people perform a uniform set of tests and, if people pass they’re not considered impaired and if they fail, they’re impaired.
The reason that this method isn’t used is probably because it’s logical and goes against the prohibitionist weltanschauung of MADD. Also, a large number of elderly drivers would score in the “impaired” category. Dealing with such drivers is a complex area as I’ve seen 88 year olds who haven’t been involved in a single accident in their driving career, but after watching them drive, I’m sure they’ve caused accidents as a result of their glacially slow driving speeds which remind me of pot smokers driving.
Loki “Also, a large number of elderly drivers would score in the “impaired” category.”
Isn’t that an argument against ‘performing a uniform set of tests’?
Using BAC levels to determine impairment may be arbitrary and poorly applied but they were accepted as something we could live with, until groups like MADD stepped forward to insist on BAC levels that have no other purpose than outright prohibition.
FYI only a zombie would consider their right to free mobility a “privilege”. Driving IS the mechanized for of free mobility and the magna carta right of free unencumbered passage on the crown’s highways.
What Alberta’s new DUI law is really all about…
Moral panic is a dynamic in which some threat to the social order – usually something taboo – causes a response that goes far beyond meeting the actual threat. A socio-political stampede, if you will.
The Hegelian Dialectic is the critical process by which planners provoke a problem, anticipating in advance the reaction to the purported crisis and conditioning us to change they deem as essential. Once the target audience is properly conditioned, the desired agenda is presented as the only solution. The solution is not intended to solve the problem, but rather to excerbate (but not solve) an existing one and then to serve as the basis for a solution (translate new problem.)
The group dynamic contrived from such moments of social unity often yields startlingly extreme results. Policymakers tend to abandon even the “mean” of their personal convictions and then grudgingly adopt the most extreme position proffered.
Take a look at the legislation. Its got everything – including but not limited to expanded “administrative” authority to arbitrarily seize/impound vehicles and suspend licenses at the road side with police acting as judge, jury and executioner – an improvisation to accommodate the massive power of the bureaucracy. If it’s “administrative” it must be reasonable and just – or so goes the Hobbesian non-thinking. Due process is conspicuous by its absence.
Alberta already has more than enough existing legislation to deal with this very real problem – “Reckless endangerment” or “Driving without due care and attention” coupled with the federal .08 BAL law all come to mind. But that would require the arresting officer to exercise discretion and to attend court and testify – messy and expensive. Further – no one has ever been convicted of impaired driving based solely upon road-side breath test evidence, as these devices are deemed inaccurate.
This is much more than just about DUI. It’s a blunt expansion of unfettered government. Redford can move on legislation like this because DUI is a social taboo. The inference is too strong in too many minds that opposing government initiatives on DUI – however misguided – somehow condones it. Redford is using taboos to condition Albertans into accepting yet more governmental power and even more future subservience.The proposed law is designed to neatly reduce police effort & costs and enhance revenue while placating those who demand “There ought to be law.”
Exploiting the tragedy of those victimized by DUI for political gain is nothing short of Machiavellian. Moral entrepreneurs such as MADD claiming to speak on behalf of the public and in concert with the media further amplify the problem by creating “folk devils” (i.e., us vs. them) and then propose extreme measures as solutions to a problem that must be dealt with before it is too late.
Given Redford’s litany of broken promises we shouldn’t be overly surprised by this draconian legislation. Historically politicians who seize power through guile and duplicity are compelled to impose tyranny to obscure their own mendacity.
He’s a Quebec MP with a Muslim background. Only been in Canada 11 years. This is just what one would expect him to interfere with. Alcohol is evil dontyaknow. He’s been a Canadian citizen for all of 7 years and will whip us into line. He would never be satisfied with this small first step and prohibition would be the ultimate goal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarik_Brahmi
And he Liberals, they’re going to stand up for Pierre’s Charter……….right?
yup, that sounds like something the NDP would do to try to get more votes.
They’re political whores.
Politicians of all stripes have been sucking up to MADD for far too long. Of course, they do so in large part because because the media beats the drum for the organization’s “absolute moral authority”. They have become the Cindy Sheehans of liquor control. Thus, this insufferable group of scolds pushes the government of Alberta into sanctioning blood alcohol levels lower than those that violate the Criminal Code, and the Brahmi PMB opens another front on law-abiding citizens.
If you consider those incidents involving impaired driving and death or serious injury, most of them are caused by people driving while blind drunk. Organizations like MADD and their enablers seem to be far more concerned about unrestricted harassment of responsible drinkers than holding serial drunk drivers accountable for their actions.
It is difficult to push back against activist totalitarians who are fronted by women whose children have been killed. Politicians will never challenge them, but somebody has to do it.
“…Politicians will never challenge them, but somebody has to do it…”
Ah, yes. The hard-to-find, mystical to the point of mythical, “somebody”. As in:
“somebody” should put a stop to sex-ed for grade one students,
“somebody” should do something about the government designating private property as conservation lands
“somebody has to do something about our electricity bills
Roseberry Old Friend, it’s not going to happen in this country. Nobody – farmers, parents, bar-owners – has the balls/brains/concern for our Country’s future to get off their arses and do something.
Law maker/enforces who display contempt or ignorance of basic civil/legal rights and due process of law should be open to review of their fitness for office. This obsession with statist socialists for Orwellian pre-crime assumption/accusation/punishment (they make the process or proof of innocence the punishment for gulity and innocent alike) is one of the most dangerous precedents we have seen yet in legislative meams.
Two words for these Orwellian goose-steppers – “JUST CAUSE”! Where is the rquired reasonable suspicion – the burden of proof, the need to prove mens rea? Has the charter been repealed?
This type of blanket presumed guit legislating should be extinguished with a political and legal sledgehammen wielded by an outraged indignant public – but first we have to wake up enough of the zombie horde to realize they are being herded over a cliff by those who presume to be concerned with their safety.
This is a great idea. /sarc
How about putting a sobriety checkpoint outside the Chamber of Parliament for a day? Test them all. You might be surprised at the results for your MP and his/her/its staff.
Question for Shiny Pony…and the test for driving impaired while under the influence of THC is????
MADD has been hijacked by the old Women’s Christian Temperance Union.
(WCTU).
MADD recently set up a “toll booth” in our city to collect donations. I told them (politely) to self-fornicate.
The biggest problem I see with MADD or any of these government lobby groups is that they are trying to “save lives”, and so will pursue any measure to do it. They are C.S. Lewis’s “tyrants for your own good”, as somebody reminded us on another thread.
The difficulty is, they think people die in wrecks because we have the wrong -laws-. “If only the government would listen to us, nobody would die!”
The truth is that government physically does not have the power to prevent ALL accidents, or even to prevent ALL drunk driving. It cannot be done.
It does however have the power to make everybody miserable, which it is now doing to shut MADD up.
If MADD continued to use their moral authority to encourage voluntary societal change, their time would be better spent.
Why would they do this? We all know, that it is SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN, that punishment does not reduce a behavior. It only increases it. Therefore, we should probably stop with fines and prison, and go more for therapy, and kindness.
Why is the NDP so against science and so pro-regressive approaches? Do they believe in Santa Claus, or Justin Trudeau as well?
A socialist dictatorship one little law at a time. All for our own good of course.
Quite frankly I think being able to drive a car is a right under freedom of mobility, and I damn well pay my share to enjoy that right. The only people who try and tell me otherwise are neo-fascist leftists who have a hatred of the private automobile and me excising my right to self determine to go wherever I feel like it whenever I want without inviting 20 hitchhikers into my car.
“it is SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN, that punishment does not reduce a behavior”
So, should prisons be emptied and rapists/murderers be set free?
Drunk driving Maggie Trudeau’s lawyer could drive a swerving constitutional truck through that ####.
Driving is a right, not a privilege. Privileges are granted by the elites to the peasants.
All of us who pay for the roads through taxes have the right to use them, this harpy could just as well tell us after buying software that using that software is a privilege, not a right.
Roseberry said: “If you consider those incidents involving impaired driving and death or serious injury, most of them are caused by people driving while blind drunk.”
Yes, this. No scientific study determined that .08 BAL(blood alcohol level) causes impairment and the harpies at MADD have been lobbying for a few years to lower the BAL to .05.(for which there is similarly no scientific study)
bitterclinger said: “MADD has been hijacked by the old Women’s Christian Temperance Union.”(WCTU).
Yes. Forget what the Phantom says about this issue, their goal is not laws for safer roads, it is alcohol prohibition. They do not want people to legally be allowed to drink any alcohol at all, drinking being but another ‘privilege’ which we peons are allowed by the elites.
The problem with THC testing was delineated in some detail in the latest New Yorker. The concentrations are ridiculously small – nanograms/ml!! – and while for occasional users, THC is cleared from their system within hours, for habitual users, the concentration is more or less permanent. However, that doesn’t mean that the habitual user is ‘stoned’ at the time.
Gee, do you think that they might go back to the old tests – can you walk a straight line, can you touch the tip of your nose, recite the alphabet backwards, etc. – that actually measured how impaired your faculties were, rather than apply an arbitrary level of BAC?
And to the philtroll: It’s not that we’re advocating driving drunk, you imbecile. We are against being required, at any time, and for no apparent reason (that is what “without cause” means) to prove to the authorities that we are in accordance with their arbitrary rules. What else do you propose, philtroll? Should the CRA have agents on the streets, demanding proof that all our taxes have been paid? Recent R.I.D.E. statistics are on the order of 1 million drivers stopped, 100 impaired charges laid; I’m pretty sure the percentage of people with outstanding tax bills is higher than .01%. Or do you, like all your neo-fascist friends, imagine some new East Germany with Stasi at every corner, demanding to see your ‘papers’ and ensuring that everyone, everywhere walks along your narrow, and narrow-minded, pre-determined path? Dolt.
Why doesn’t Phil stop being a stupid lying asshole. People here aren’t in lockstep with anything, you’ve trolled here often enough to see that. Nobody has a problem with driving sober you literacy challenged moron, they have a problem with being searched without cause.
Roseberry said: “If you consider those incidents involving impaired driving and death or serious injury, most of them are caused by people driving while blind drunk.”
I want to touch on this one again. Despite the statistics which MADD or anyone else have which originate from the police(all police are politicized), very few road accidents can truthfully be dumped on the doorstep of alcohol consumption.
Bad driving habits are rife these days and government has no intention of regulating changes which will improve the situation, especially if the insurance industry isn’t spurring government in a particular direction on some specific issue like the distraction of cell phones.(you don’t see the insurance industry donating huge sums to MADD)
MADD is political, period.
I’m going to write my MP and demand that their charitable status be revoked based on this appearance with an NDP MP endorsing this political measure.
Pretty much the same ignorance and bully tactics used by the libs and cops under the Firearms Act.
Reductio ad Absurdum:
Imagine the lives saved by reducing the maximum highway speed to 25 km/hr with vehicle seizure the penalty for non compliance.
Roseberry has it exactly correct. Our lenient Canadian justice system will not deal harshly with individuals who continue to drive while drunk. MADD like any good political organization takes the path of least resistance and demands that everyone be punished for the failings of our courts.
MADD has to fine a way to survive now that they are a bloated organization with everyone at the trough. Just like Greenpeace has to find a way to survive. Etc. You see the pattern.
These people all make sick. They add no value to society, yet suck money like vacuum cleaners, and restrict freedoms like communists.
Tell that fat Aussie pig, who needs a hair but and who apparently lives in fear of being hit by a drunk driver, to go back to Australia where he will be safer.
Well … Obama’s NHTSB is doing it right now across the US….
https://www.law.uwo.ca/lawsys/pages/contents.asp?contentName=Instructors&contentFileName=rsolomon
I assume this is the Robert Solomon referred to in the video.
“He is currently the National Director of Legal Policy for Mothers Against Drunk Driving Canada, and a member of national and international traffic safety organizations.”
“The NDP is proposing a bill that would allow cops to test drivers’ alcohol levels without having any reasonable grounds.”
Well, of course they are.
I guess this guy doesn’t realize we already have “ride” checkpoints which are operated without reasonable grounds, but are considered a “benefit to society” so much so that the SCC supported it. I don’t enjoy the thought of what happens in some US states when exactly this happens now, I remember back in Indiana in the early 00’s that this was going on. Went all the way to the SCoUS and the law was tossed out for infringing on the 4th.
I don’t expect this bill will pass, but if it does. I don’t expect that it will take long for it to hit the SCC either, there’s already exceptional leeway given with a charter exemption. And I hazard that the SCC will make the point that if the police find that it’s “that much of an issue” that they increase the number of officers doing RIDE checkpoints.
Gawd, the police would love this. Instead of being ambush predators, waiting for their prey to slip up as they pass an unexpected school zone,they can graduate to active hunter. My son, because of his age and vehicle pulls over and quickly exits the car, if he notices that a cop seems interested in him. They don’t need much reason, and it’s pretty easy to allege something like a rolling stop, and impossible to fight it. But, of course, it’s all for the children.
The NDP,Liberals,police,and all others who love to demonstrate the power of the State, will be glad to run roadblocks 24/7 complete with unwarranted breathalyzer tests, to grind the peasants down to complete compliance.
This is the ugly truth behind the activists who always claim it’s for our own good. Our “good” is immaterial,it’s about power,the right to remove our inherent freedoms and subjugate them to State authority.
They’re f***ing communists, by any definition.
MADD is mad period, they’re right off rails. In the past I have donated to them but they’ve become a bit too big for their boots, not another nickle from me. Besides, what good are they doing, who are they helping? There are and always will be idiots who will drink and drive, no one is in favour of that but MADD money isn’t going stop it, we have the police forces to go into schools and use TV and radio to get the message out, we pay them already.
Well for sure such an act would restore the publics faith in the police.
As parasitic thieves with a govt protected monopoly.
Rights and responsibilities, use of infrastructure built with our money is our right, driving is a privilege? Ok employment as a bureaucrat is a privilege not a right, therefore there shall be no public service unions.
Arbitrary firings are quite OK ?
After all arbitrary accusation of guilt seems acceptable to MADD, the NDP and their supporters.
“Accept the truth. It may one day Liberalate you.”
There you are, Phil. Fixed it for you.
MADD is not the problem. The problem here in my little province of NB is that drunk drivers get off if the dotting of the ‘i’s and the crossing of the ‘t’s regarding language rights are not letter perfect. A Francophone drunk driver has a high chance of beating the
rap if he is caught in the English majority areas.
Between this and the Conservative’s proposal to allow cops to take DNA from anyone we’re boned.
Phil: old Sioux word for ‘head smashed in buffalo jump’.
I wonder if the NDP/Liberals would support something like this if it was for a roadside THC test?
It’s a private members bill which means it will probably go nowhere. Every politician has to make his/her mark , much like a dog is obligated to pee on a fire hydrant. MADD is now something like the Terry Fox run. It’s a business with cushy offices, a large staff of drones and money for nothing ’cause the twits are free. Anyway, it’s the NDP, who will do anything to get onto the media since shiny pony has hogged the lime light. I doubt if this will get far.
KevinB, you’re right that performance based testing should be the norm. I’d much rather have an alcoholic driving with his usual 0.8 EtOH level where he functions normally than with a 0.07 level where he’s in danger of having an alcohol withdrawal seizure while driving and being far more of a danger on the road.
What the laws totally ignore is tolerance to a drug. A first time pot smoker shouldn’t be driving afterwards as should a person with chronic pain taking their first dose of a strong opiate. However, for chronic pot smokers and opiate users, the brain develops tolerance to the effects of the drug to the extent that they are perfectly competent to perform such activities as driving. There are people with chronic pain conditions who are employed in safety critical positions while on doses of opiates that would put an opiate naive individual into immediate respiratory arrest. The criteria for such individuals to be employed in a safety critical position is to be on a stable dose of an opiate and have developed tolerance to the negative cognitive effects.
Why EtOH is not treated the same way is a mystery. People who drink regularly are tolerant to the negative effects of EtOH and can safely drive at 0.08% BAC and above depending on how much they drink. Some experiments I did in medical school showed that reaction time decreased with increasing blood alcohol concentrations in a majority of medical students who drank regularly and only went up in light drinkers. This was a very unpopular finding for the prof who taught the course who assumed I’d find a monotonic increase in reaction times as a function of BAC. Explains why it used to take me 6 beer before I could parallel park when I first started driving; something I was totally unable to do while sober.
Actually, the existence of individuals in safety critical positions on large doses of opiates is likely what one needs to fight the prohibitionist scum that inhabit MADD in court. What one needs is objective performance data on an individual with a given BAC and, if the objective performance data is equal to or surpasses that of a sober driver then it is completely illogical to charge them with a crime.
If one is dealing with BAC levels allowed in individuals, one would have a very complex age and driving experience stratified table where teenage drivers would be allowed 0 as they’re not of drinking age and being drunk and driving means they’ve committed an illegal act. In young males BAC levels would likely be less than 0.08 whereas in middle aged males who have a long history of drinking and driving, BAC levels would be substantially greater than 0.08 depending on performance. Once one gets into the 65+ age group, acceptable BAC levels would start to drop as this is the age group where drinking catches up to people who attempt to drink like they did when they were 25 years old. There’s lots of evidence for such a complex stratification, but the simplest thing to do would be to have people perform a uniform set of tests and, if people pass they’re not considered impaired and if they fail, they’re impaired.
The reason that this method isn’t used is probably because it’s logical and goes against the prohibitionist weltanschauung of MADD. Also, a large number of elderly drivers would score in the “impaired” category. Dealing with such drivers is a complex area as I’ve seen 88 year olds who haven’t been involved in a single accident in their driving career, but after watching them drive, I’m sure they’ve caused accidents as a result of their glacially slow driving speeds which remind me of pot smokers driving.
Loki “Also, a large number of elderly drivers would score in the “impaired” category.”
Isn’t that an argument against ‘performing a uniform set of tests’?
Using BAC levels to determine impairment may be arbitrary and poorly applied but they were accepted as something we could live with, until groups like MADD stepped forward to insist on BAC levels that have no other purpose than outright prohibition.
FYI only a zombie would consider their right to free mobility a “privilege”. Driving IS the mechanized for of free mobility and the magna carta right of free unencumbered passage on the crown’s highways.
What Alberta’s new DUI law is really all about…
Moral panic is a dynamic in which some threat to the social order – usually something taboo – causes a response that goes far beyond meeting the actual threat. A socio-political stampede, if you will.
The Hegelian Dialectic is the critical process by which planners provoke a problem, anticipating in advance the reaction to the purported crisis and conditioning us to change they deem as essential. Once the target audience is properly conditioned, the desired agenda is presented as the only solution. The solution is not intended to solve the problem, but rather to excerbate (but not solve) an existing one and then to serve as the basis for a solution (translate new problem.)
The group dynamic contrived from such moments of social unity often yields startlingly extreme results. Policymakers tend to abandon even the “mean” of their personal convictions and then grudgingly adopt the most extreme position proffered.
Take a look at the legislation. Its got everything – including but not limited to expanded “administrative” authority to arbitrarily seize/impound vehicles and suspend licenses at the road side with police acting as judge, jury and executioner – an improvisation to accommodate the massive power of the bureaucracy. If it’s “administrative” it must be reasonable and just – or so goes the Hobbesian non-thinking. Due process is conspicuous by its absence.
Alberta already has more than enough existing legislation to deal with this very real problem – “Reckless endangerment” or “Driving without due care and attention” coupled with the federal .08 BAL law all come to mind. But that would require the arresting officer to exercise discretion and to attend court and testify – messy and expensive. Further – no one has ever been convicted of impaired driving based solely upon road-side breath test evidence, as these devices are deemed inaccurate.
This is much more than just about DUI. It’s a blunt expansion of unfettered government. Redford can move on legislation like this because DUI is a social taboo. The inference is too strong in too many minds that opposing government initiatives on DUI – however misguided – somehow condones it. Redford is using taboos to condition Albertans into accepting yet more governmental power and even more future subservience.The proposed law is designed to neatly reduce police effort & costs and enhance revenue while placating those who demand “There ought to be law.”
Exploiting the tragedy of those victimized by DUI for political gain is nothing short of Machiavellian. Moral entrepreneurs such as MADD claiming to speak on behalf of the public and in concert with the media further amplify the problem by creating “folk devils” (i.e., us vs. them) and then propose extreme measures as solutions to a problem that must be dealt with before it is too late.
Given Redford’s litany of broken promises we shouldn’t be overly surprised by this draconian legislation. Historically politicians who seize power through guile and duplicity are compelled to impose tyranny to obscure their own mendacity.
He’s a Quebec MP with a Muslim background. Only been in Canada 11 years. This is just what one would expect him to interfere with. Alcohol is evil dontyaknow. He’s been a Canadian citizen for all of 7 years and will whip us into line. He would never be satisfied with this small first step and prohibition would be the ultimate goal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarik_Brahmi