Earlier this month, Élizabeth Rivera and Antoine Bittar, a Quebec couple whose daughter died in a drunk-driving crash, testified at a legislative committee that they were told that, in order to meet the province’s Transport Minister, Geneviève Guilbault, they would have to pay $100 each to attend a cocktail-party fundraiser.
The passing comment landed like a bombshell, because it suggested that anyone looking to influence government policy needed to “pay to play.”
The ruling Coalition Avenir Québec initially said it was a misunderstanding; then, with public anger growing, the party apologized profusely and dramatically reversed its policy, banning political donations from individuals. All in a matter of hours.
Lost in this political uproar, however, was a much more important story.
Ms. Rivera and Mr. Bittar are leaders of the Quebec chapter of MADD Canada – Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Their daughter, Jessica Sarli-Rivera, was 26 when she died in a single-car crash on Mar. 20, 2017. The driver, who was impaired, and two other passengers survived.
The bereaved couple went to the legislative committee, which was studying proposed new road-safety legislation, to make a specific ask: Lower the legal threshold on impaired driving to 0.05 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood, from the current 0.08.
It was the same message they were trying to deliver to Ms. Guilbault at the fateful fundraiser last October. That the couple had to attend a cocktail party to do so adds a bitterly ironic twist.
The backstory here is that Canada’s Criminal Code sets out the legal limit for blood-alcohol concentration, which is 0.08 per cent; after that threshold, you can be charged with impaired driving. But every province and territory also has administrative penalties for drivers operating a motor vehicle in the BAC “warm zone,” which is between 0.04 per cent and 0.08 per cent. Drivers in that range do not face criminal charges but can have their license suspended (from 48 hours to seven days, depending on jurisdiction), face vehicle impoundment, and can be forced into remedial programs, or have a breath-screening ignition-interlock device installed on their vehicle.
That’s the case in every province, that is, except in Quebec, where there are no such sanctions at all.
In Quebec, as La Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé wrote recently, you can still “drive a bit hot” with a BAC of up to 0.08 per cent without fear of repercussions. Yet, as the Institut de santé publique du Québec’s research shows, while intoxication happens gradually, when a driver’s blood alcohol increases from 0.05 per cent to 0.08 per cent, the risk of fatal collision jumps fourfold.
In October, Quebec coroner Yvon Garneau recommended that the provincial government fix its “anachronistic” legislation and lower the limit. Ms. Guilbault, the Transport Minister, immediately rejected the recommendation, saying: “A review of the alcohol limit allowed while driving is not envisaged by our government.”
But why not?
The evidence for lowering the legal limit is incontrovertible. The Criminal Code should be amended. Barring that, tougher provincial rules are essential.
Research shows that at 0.05 per cent BAC, most people are significantly impaired. The risk of dying while driving in the 0.05 to 0.08 per cent “warm zone” is seven times higher than for a driver who blows 0 per cent.
Canada is an outlier; Québec, even more so.
In most European countries, drivers face criminal sanctions, and severe ones, at 0.05 per cent. In Japan, it’s 0.03 per cent, and in Sweden, 0.02 per cent. Many jurisdictions have zero-tolerance rules: 0 per cent for young people and repeat offenders.
Every province has a 0.05-per-cent BAC limit that triggers some kind of consequence, except Saskatchewan, where the limit is 0.04 per cent. Yet in Quebec, double that level of impairment is tolerated.
Clearly, Quebec is taking its reputation for joie de vivre a little too literally. The restaurant and bar sector must have the ear of government. MADD Canada clearly does not.
Pity.
As Ms. Rivera and Mr. Bittar know all too well, there’s no joy in losing a loved one to drunk driving.
We do not take the dangers of impaired driving seriously enough in Canada. We don’t even have comprehensive national data. The best guesstimate is that about 1,800 Canadians are killed and 150,000 injured every year in impaired-driving incidents. But those numbers, from the Canadian Council of Motor Transport Administrators, are old; they also don’t include off-road deaths and injuries.
And a disproportionate number of those deaths and injuries are young people – like Jessica Sarli-Rivera.
Most impaired-driving deaths are preventable. That prevention begins with sound legislation.
The CAQ has showed that, when it wants to, the rules can change quickly. It should now move fast, then, to prevent Quebeckers from driving “a bit hot.”