According to a CBC analysis, administrative data from the Parole Board of Canada revealed that around 13% of people convicted of drunk driving were granted pardon, the highest pardon rate of all crimes resulting in a prison sentence committed between 2000 and 2010.
Robert Solomon, director of legal policy for MADD Canada, a group that lobbies for policies that combat drunk driving, says that “if a pardon is going to assist people who are committed to dealing with their drinking problem, to get assessed, get into treatment and stay clear of impaired driving, we would be in favour of it.”
Currently, individuals cannot be acquitted unless they serve their sentence or pay their fines, have not committed a crime for the past three, five or ten years (depending on the severity of the crime) and pay the $150 administrative fees.
Consultations are currently underway to determine if these fees should increase to $631, opening the debate on what effects the measure would have on pardon accessibility.
Since June 29, an amendment to the Criminal Records Act made it more difficult to erase a crime from your record and gives the board the ability to “consider additional factors in the decision-making process for pardons.”
Before the law came into effect, 37,000 people requested a pardon and around 75% of the requests were granted. Today, it’s estimated that the number of applications has dropped to 25,000 and that 60% of them are accepted.
In the last decade, 67,024 Canadians have been condemned for exceeding the legal limit of 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, making drunk driving the most common offence in the country. Second place goes to assault, with 30,634 recorded criminal accusations.
Source: CBC
Robert Solomon, director of legal policy for MADD Canada, a group that lobbies for policies that combat drunk driving, says that “if a pardon is going to assist people who are committed to dealing with their drinking problem, to get assessed, get into treatment and stay clear of impaired driving, we would be in favour of it.”
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Currently, individuals cannot be acquitted unless they serve their sentence or pay their fines, have not committed a crime for the past three, five or ten years (depending on the severity of the crime) and pay the $150 administrative fees.
Consultations are currently underway to determine if these fees should increase to $631, opening the debate on what effects the measure would have on pardon accessibility.
Since June 29, an amendment to the Criminal Records Act made it more difficult to erase a crime from your record and gives the board the ability to “consider additional factors in the decision-making process for pardons.”
Before the law came into effect, 37,000 people requested a pardon and around 75% of the requests were granted. Today, it’s estimated that the number of applications has dropped to 25,000 and that 60% of them are accepted.
In the last decade, 67,024 Canadians have been condemned for exceeding the legal limit of 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, making drunk driving the most common offence in the country. Second place goes to assault, with 30,634 recorded criminal accusations.
Source: CBC