International DUI Drunk Driving Law Debate
Dear Teacher or Webmaster:
Re: The Canadian Impaired Driving Debate
I am a Barrister & Solicitor practising in Mississauga, Ontario. The bulk of my almost 25 years experience lies in the field of criminal law.
Impaired driving cases are always in the news. Members of the public have strong feelings about deaths and injuries that occur on the highways of Canada as a result of drunk driving. The Crown takes the prosecution of these cases very seriously.
Members of the public, however, are not always aware of the serious impact that loss of one's liberty and driver's licence have on the individual's ability to earn a livelihood. When a person loses his or her driver's licence for a year or more, he or she often loses a job thus inflicting hardship on other family members. Federal and provincial legislation which provide for minimum and sometimes automatic penalties and suspensions often preclude the genuine exercise of discretion by a sentencing judge.
Canadians need to learn more about their drunk driving laws. This debate provides a forum for both education and quality discussion about possible changes to the law.
Beginning in December 1996, I have posted each month a resolution on the Web at my site. The resolutions propose a specific change to the law or policy.
I will encourage students, teachers, judges, lawyers, and politicians to take government or opposition positions on each resolution. Please prepare a careful argument related to a particular month's resolution and then publish your views.
If law teachers, students, debating club members, or others in your school are interested in participating and your school has its own Internet site, please create a link to my site and create an appropriate web page at your site for posting of arguments.
Your web page for arguments should be entitled "The Canadian Impaired Driving Debate" and should be clearly linked from your school's home page. You may copy, use or reference my graphics if you wish. Perhaps this or a shrunken version could be used as a standard icon to guide readers of your web site to the page(s) for this debate.
I hope to expand my own web site in such a way as to provide links to a number of legal resources as well as other opinions respecting the Criminal Code drunk driving offences. I believe we will be able to intelligently debate these controversial topics and that all participants will learn a great deal about Canadian criminal law and the development of web pages in the process.
If you have any comments or questions please e-mail me at biss@lawyers.ca.
Yours very truly,
Stephen R. Biss
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Copyright 1996, Stephen R. Biss, Permission to copy and reference is given so long as this line is included.