The public will be in danger if a B.C. Supreme Court judge doesn’t suspend a ruling that struck down the province’s drunk driving law, a government lawyer said.
The public would be safer if nobody was allowed to drive, period. Taking away everybody's vehicle would make things far simpler for everybody involved in enforcing public safety on our roads, from police officers to prosecutors to judges to lawmakers. But anybody who proposed such a thing would look like an idiot, and even if they weren't immediately laughed out of whatever room they happened to be in, constitutional rights tend to pour cold water over such ideas. Indeed, that's sort of the point, and it's a consideration one always has to keep in mind if one is placed in charge of trying to keep us from killing each other: how safe can we make people vs. how many freedoms can we take away?George Copley told Mr. Justice Jon Sigurdson on Monday that the regulation that allowed automatic roadside suspensions has saved dozens of lives and more than halved injuries since it was implemented over a year ago.
For obvious reasons, driving drunk and killing someone in the process is not a freedom that should be celebrated - that's why it isn't - but a draconian punishment for drivers who have done nothing more than blow over .08, with no due process or ability to appeal is a ridiculous extension of this concept, and deserves our contempt.
Just in case the time-tested "it's for your safety" argument doesn't work, the government's lawyer in this case tried another classic: the ol' "we're out of money" shtick.
Mr. Copley also warned of “financial chaos” for the provincial government if the judge ruled that it had to pay back the thousands caught up in the scheme.In other words, violating peoples' constitutional rights and causing them real harm should be a cost-free venture as long as the government is doing it. After all, you or I certainly wouldn't be expected to financially compensate someone for damages ( such as loss of car, and subsequent loss of job and/or home ), would we?
10 comments:
Why is it that only criminals in this country have rights? Victims of crime and law abiding citizens have no rights whatsoever in this land! Yet the liberal charter of so called rights and freedoms has specifics that are there to protect only CRIMINALS!
So an entire army of neighborhood watch groups, police forces, bylaw officers, prosecutors, judges,and lawmakers isn't enough of a support network for victims of crime?
If anon above is really dumb enough to think that "rights only protect criminals," he really needs to learn who Martin Niemoller was...
Just sayin'
Heh.
The BC government, like just about every government in Canada and a lot of special interest groups, practise what I call creeping totalitarianism and this is just one more example. As long as people buy the argument that it is better to give up more of their personal freedom in the name of safty or for their own good, we can only expect to see more and more of the same.
As long as people buy the argument that it is better to give up more of their personal freedom in the name of safty or for their own good, we can only expect to see more and more of the same.
Exactly.
the old it will save lives bs. ya, and if we were all under house arrest from 6pm to 6am that would saves lives as well. oh no beer or wine, no smokes, eat what you are told to. then when you go crazy and kill everyone within reach it will still be societies fault because there still were not enough regulations and laws.
Yes, but you wouldn't be "in danger"!
Yet another example of the drip, drip, drip of soft totalitarianism.
Yep.
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