What happens when you don’t care about rights? If you’re an individual you’re probably simply struggling to survive on a day to day basis with all sorts of hurdles and problems. Perhaps you don’t think about your rights enough to care. You know you have rights, but whether they’ll be respected is really an issue of law and government.
They can leave people hanging, with the prohibition on their driving record for years and years. What do they care?
If the government doesn’t care about rights, that’s a much bigger concern. Governments legislate rights. The Charter of Rights and most pieces of legislation define rights, and the courts and governments are responsible for ensuring that your rights are respected.
When you don’t care about rights as an individual, so be it. When you don’t care about rights and you are the Government, you’re failing the people.
Case in point: RoadSafetyBC
Today we received a decision on an IRP three years from the date that the prohibition was issued. Three years to render a decision.
This was not a case that was appealed to court. Nor was it a case where there was some complex evidence that was not easily understood. Yet RoadSafetyBC took three years to render the decision cancelling the prohibition with a one sentence decision.
Some context
It’s important to remember what we’re speaking of here. When the Immediate Roadside Prohibition scheme was introduced in the spring of 2010, the BC Liberal Government said that the purpose was to provide swift severe punishment for drunk drivers. Leaving aside the fact that the IRP law doesn’t punish drunk drivers, the primary ostensible reason to take drunk driving cases from the courts was to shorten the period from offence to punishment. The idea was that the punishment would happen right away, as opposed to a year down the road which is typical for most impaired driving criminal cases. That’s why they called it “Immediate.”
Immediate might have been the BC Government’s ostensible justification for the IRP law, but their real interest was stripping legal rights from drivers. Remember, when it comes to matters before the RoadSafetyBC tribunal, they don’t uphold Charter rights, they don’t grant Charter remedies and they claim they’re exempt from the Charter because an IRP isn’t an offence.
Abiding by rights takes time and costs money. For example, you have a right to make full answer and defense in a criminal drunk driving case, so the government prosecutor is required to provide your lawyer with all relevant documents and evidence including police notes, electronic recordings, maintenance records for the breathalyzer, etc. With the IRP scheme they only give you what they want to give you. You have no rights except what they identify in the legislation. And it’s so much worse still.
A reasonable delay?
Just two weeks ago the Supreme Court of Canada spelled out a new cap for a reasonable period of delay in which to complete a criminal case. The court said going forward, for criminal cases there is a new presumptive ceiling of 1.5 years. If the matter is delayed beyond that for most summary matters, courts in this country should be prepared to intervene because it is a period generally outside of what we would consider a reasonable time to be tried.
So, in the context of a criminal drunk driving case, the expectation is that the matter will take time but it should not take more than 18 months. In an IRP case, the ostensible idea is that the matter will be resolved quickly — a decision should be issued within 21 days of the issuance of the IRP. Importantly, the tight time period is often held out as the justification for not providing better disclosure.
When you don’t care about rights
There is no Charter remedy for delay in an IRP case, which means when it comes to the timeline for an IRP to be resolved, drivers in BC have no right to have their case resolved in a reasonable time. There is no pressure on the Government. They can leave people hanging, with the prohibition on their driving record for years and years. What do they care? They sure don’t seem to care about rights.
In the case of our client, it took 3 years for RoadSafetyBC to render the decision cancelling the prohibition. He waited 3 years to get his name cleared, all the while the prohibition remained on his driving record. This is grossly unfair by any measure.
In that three year period, had he known it would take so long, he could have completed a university degree. He could have grown an asparagus crop. But how could he have imagined it would take that long? Had they revoked the prohibition in a reasonable time, he could have earned a good living as a firefighter, pilot, property manager, car salesperson or any other job that requires a clean driving record.
We’re happy that we succeeded for our client. Still, it’s utterly shameful that a person would need to wait three years to be exonerated for a so-called “immediate” roadside prohibition.