Among MADD Canada’s top priorities are Mandatory Alcohol Screening (MAS) and Immediate Roadside Prohibition (IRP)/Immediate Roadside Sanctions (IRS). There is good news on both fronts – more police services are using MAS at virtually every traffic stop, and the Government of Saskatchewan just announced their commitment to enhancing administrative penalties for impaired driving consistent with an IRP/IRS program.
MADD Canada is advocating for the federal government to expand the ability of police to use MAS for boat operators and after a collision and we will continue to promote IRP/IRS to other provinces and territories.
MAS and IRP/IRS focus on alcohol impaired driving and I am sometimes asked why MADD Canada is doing more for drug-impaired drivers. We are but the measures to combat drug-impaired driving are more complicated.
MADD Canada’s mission is to stop impaired driving and that includes both alcohol and drug impairment. We have been talking about drugs for decades and it has been a part of our public messaging and School Program. We support families who have lost someone or been injured because of a driver impaired by alcohol, cannabis and/or other drugs.
Canada has been seeing a rise of fatal crashes with the presence of drugs (cannabis and other drugs) long before cannabis was legalized and that trend seems to have continued.
Notice the wording I used there? I did not say we are seeing an increase in fatal cases involving drug-impaired drivers. When we say there is an increase in the presence of drugs in fatal cases, that means those drivers have drugs in their system, but we cannot say definitively that they were impaired at the time of the crash.
But regardless, this is not a good trend.
I am not a scientist – it was probably my worst subject in school. I am not going to try to explain the science of how drugs impact our ability to drive vs how alcohol impacts us. I will just say it is complex and more complicated than alcohol.
Drug-impaired driving has been illegal for a century but police in Canada did not really have any tools to detect it. That began to change in 2008 when the Criminal Code was amended to give police the ability to do Standardized Field Sobriety Tests (SFST) on suspected drug-impaired drivers and have drivers undergo evaluations by accredited Drug Recognition Experts (DREs).
For SFSTs, think of those physical tests police do at roadside that you may have seen on some of those American police reality shows – the driver has to walk a straight line, stand on one foot, etc. A DRE evaluation involves a uniform 12-step evaluation including psychophysical tests and bodily sample requests. In both cases, police must have reasonable grounds to demand someone to undergo the tests. Ten years later, in Bill C-46, the role of DREs was clarified including a provision that officers do not need to be qualified as experts at trial to provide opinion testimony.
Bill C-46 introduced a per se level for cannabis. It is now illegal to drive with 5 ng or more of THC per mL of blood, with between 2 and 5 ng (a summary offence), or with 2.5 ng or more of THC per mL of blood combined with a blood alcohol concentration of 50 mg per 100 mL.
Although critics argue that there is a lack of scientific proof that all drivers, especially if they are regular cannabis users, are truly impaired at 5 ngs, the government felt it important to set a per se level (like we have for alcohol). And there is evidence that the risk of a crash is elevated when someone is at 5 ngs.
A recent Ontario Court of Appeal case upheld the per se level. Brady Robertson, whose THC level was 8 times the legal limit, is currently serving 17 years for killing Karolina Ciasullo and her three daughters: Klara, Lilianna and Mila. Robertson argued the per se level was arbitrary and overbroad.
The Ontario Court of Appeal disagreed. The court found that the per se limit is “rationally connected to Parliament’s objectives of deterrence and enhanced detection.” 1 The court said that the “overbreadth threshold was not met by the narrow class of frequent and chronic users who may exceed the limit after impairment subsides.” 2
It remains to be seen if Robertson appeals to the Supreme Court, but this was an important decision.
Bill C-46 also gave police a new tool to use at roadside to test for drug-impaired driving. Oral fluid devices use saliva to determine if someone is above the legal limit. These devices are set to test for recent use and like roadside devices for alcohol, they are not evidence of impairment (i.e. if the case goes to court). Unlike alcohol, police need reasonable suspicion to demand someone do a roadside test for drugs.
We hope that one day, MAS and IRP/IRS will be applied to drugs as well as alcohol. But it will take time, more favourable rulings from the courts, and advancements in technology. There are decades of experience with alcohol, which is pretty straightforward in terms of our understanding of how it impacts the body what a standard drink is regardless of what you are drinking. But the experience with drugs is not as deep and our understanding of drugs is not equal to our understanding of alcohol.
There are lots of different kinds of drugs with different potencies. In 2022, the RCMP reported that the most commonly drug categories identified by DRE’s causing impairment in Canada are:
- Stimulants (i.e. cocaine, meth) – 40.14%
- Narcotic Analgesics (i.e. oxycontin, fentanyl) – 37.3 %
- Cannabis – 22.85 % (statistically remained the same percentage since 2016)
- CNS Depressants (i.e. diazepam) – 19.24 %
- Dissociative Anesthetics, Hallucinogens and Inhalants (i.e. ketamine, LSD) – less than 1 %
- More than one category of drugs – 36.78%
So what is MADD Canada doing to reduce drug-impaired driving? In May, when a group of MADD Canada volunteers went to Parliament Hill, we spoke to the Public Safety Minister about the need to ensure there is funding for training for more DREs and we were told funding would be available.
We also talked to the Minister and officials at the Justice Minister’s office about the need to expand the menu of drugs that the oral fluid devices are authorized to test for. As mentioned, one device is authorized to test for cannabis and cocaine, and the other device is only authorized to test for cannabis.
The devices are capable of testing for other drugs but approval is limited in Canada. In Australia, oral fluid devices can test for THC, methamphetamine, MDMA and cocaine.
In Canada, Justice Canada relies on the Drugs and Driving Committee (DDC) to provide advice on drug-impaired driving issues including oral fluid devices. The DDC is a committee within the professional organization of the Canadian Society of Forensic Science and is comprised of Forensic Toxicologists and other subject matter experts from across Canada.
At this point, they are not recommending the menu of drugs be expanded. We hope that changes because the current limit does impact the willingness of some police services to invest in and use oral fluid devices which we believe can be an important tool for law enforcement.
But drug-impaired driving is a public safety issue. MADD Canada advocated for the changes made in 2008 and 2018 and is committed to advocating for resources and tools for police and more education and public awareness campaigns. We will continue to talk to Justice Canada, the RCMP and partner with other road safety organizations to address this issue.
- R. v. Robertson, 2026 ONCA 281
- R. v. Robertson, 2026 ONCA 281