Provincial crown prosecutors will no longer be able to plead impaired drivers down to a lesser charge under new rules from Alberta Justice.
The provincial department that oversees crown prosecutors across Alberta told them this spring that they could no longer plead offenders down to careless driving from impaired driving.
Careless driving is a serious offence that carries stiff fines and can include driving bans, but is laid under the provincial traffic safety act, unlike impaired driving which is a criminal offence.
Drivers convicted of impaired driving face a criminal record, a mandatory one-year driving ban and a minimum $1,000 fine.
Parts of a new law designed to get tough on impaired driving will come into place this weekend. Impaired drivers will now face automatic licence suspensions until their cases are resolved. Previously, drivers caught at the roadside with a blood alcohol over 0.08 would face a 90-day suspension, but would also be given 21 days after their arrest before the suspension began.
The new law also allows police to seize vehicles of impaired drivers.
A second part of the law will come into force later this summer. Those provisions surround drivers with lower blood alcohol levels of between 0.05 and 0.08, who currently face 24-hour suspension. Those suspensions will grow in the fall and the police will also be permitted to seize vehicles.
Alberta Justice said the change for crown prosecutors is not part of the broader impaired driving strategy.
“It really is not linked to the provincial strategy on impaired driving, it was an operational decision. It was made this past spring and it is related to Alberta’s position on plea negotiations,” said Alison Keppler, a spokesperson for the department.
Keppler said the province studied how to use plea agreements to get the most convictions and determined not to allow careless driving pleas.
“What we learned was that in jurisdictions where we were not pleading down to careless driving there was a better rate of success, and better results,” she said. “It was a decision that was made across the board for Alberta. We want to see that same rate of success province wide.”
The province also believes in many cases there just isn’t a similarity between the two charges, Keppler said.
“Impaired driving and careless driving are two separate offences and so it is not always appropriate to plead down to careless driving.”
She said if an impaired case is not strong enough to go to trial then the crown will withdraw.
“If we don’t have a reasonable likelihood of conviction for impaired then we are not going to proceed.”
