Beware the well-meaning do-gooders who fight battles on legal principle.
Common sense and lives saved be damned, so long as "the spirit of the law" is upheld.
It's in that spirit that the B.C. Civil Liberties Association forced the B.C. government to defend itself with our tax dollars against a legal challenge to the province's drunk-driving laws.
That four-year legal battle came to an end Monday, when the B.C. Appeal Court refused to strike down any of the laws allowing stiff fines, penalties and roadside suspensions for impaired drivers.
The government rightly argued that the laws save lives and that since the charges weren't criminal but to encourage public safety, they didn't infringe on an individual's right to due process and to be considered innocent until proven guilty.
The civil rights advocates took the ridiculous approach that the police were being given too much power and that the constitutional rights of drivers were being violated.
These advocates like to use words like "rights" and "freedom" and "liberties" because it automatically puts anyone with the audacity to disagree with them on the defensive. Who, after all, could possibly be against "rights" and "freedom" and "liberties?"
Groups like the B.C. Civil Liberties Association seem fundamentally opposed to any kind of limitation on the "right" and "freedom" and "liberties" of individuals. That way tyranny and oppression lie, they ominously suggest.
What they won't admit is that these noble and worthy abstract concepts have real-world costs and implications.
In a perfect world, there would be no need for police to seize people's vehicles and automatically suspend them from driving for 60 days because they were caught driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. No one would drive impaired, police wouldn't need to check people for impairment and no one's rights would be violated.
In the real world, however, it is reasonable to set limits on the rights, freedoms and liberties of individuals when some of those individuals put themselves and others at great risk of harm.
Carrying a concealed weapon allows individuals the means to protect themselves, their family and loved ones, their property and their personal freedom, but doing so is illegal in Canada without a permit. That's because of the potential for violence and harm to other individuals and to the harm caused by people taking the law into their own hands, rather than depending on law enforcement.
The state, through police officers, also has the right to immediately take away that concealed weapon and charge the individual with a crime. While the individual has not caused any direct harm to themselves or anyone else with the crime of carrying a concealed weapon, our society, through its laws, has decided that the risk for harm overrules the individual's right to carry that concealed weapon.
It's not a perfect system but it's better than anarchy.
Giving police officers the right to take away the vehicles and driver's licences of citizens for a short period of time isn't ideal, either, but the alternative is much worse.
The concealed weapon analogy is the right one in this case because in the hands of responsible drivers, vehicles are a safe and efficient mode of transportation. Put a drunk person behind the wheel of an automobile, however, and that vehicle is now a dangerous weapon, a gun on wheels, with the potential to kill and injure many innocent victims.
Seen that way, temporarily taking away someone's vehicle and their privilege to operate one is a reasonable infringement on individual rights, because of the benefit it delivers to the safety and well-being of others and to the broader society.
Strangely, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association thinks that if drunk driving was a charge under the Criminal Code, it would have a case for its argument to be considered innocent until proven guilty. Perhaps the group should be careful what it wishes for. As the concealed weapon example shows, police could still have the right to seize vehicles and many Canadians wouldn't object to drunk driving being made a criminal offence.
The chances of having a criminal record if caught impaired behind the wheel would make a lot of people think twice before taking the chance of getting behind the wheel.
