Impaired driving sentencing. Issue of whether credit towards the s. 259(1) CC prohibition should be given for time under the Alberta Administrative License Suspension (ALS), on the basis that a failure to do so would violate the accused’s rights under s. 11(h) of the Charter.
Held: Only the 2012 ALS regime violated s. 11(h); credit read-in.
The close connection between the criminal and regulatory regimes made the old 2012 ALS and s. 259(1) punishments equivalent for the purposes of s. 11(h). Thus, serving the full criminal prohibition without credit for ALS time would offend s. 11(h). In contrast, the new 2018 regime does not violate s. 11(h) as the ALS is not tied to the criminal proceedings. Appropriate remedy was to read in words at the end of s. 719(3) CC as follows: “and in imposing the mandatory driving prohibition under section 259(1), the court shall give credit against the driving prohibition period the amount of time the offender was subject to the version of the Alberta Administrative Licence Suspension programme in effect on the day the offender was charged with the offence giving rise to the driving prohibition.”
I. Savage – Defence Counsel