This is page numbers 6699 – 6756 of the Hansard for the 17th Assembly, 5th Session. The original version can be accessed on the Legislative Assembly's website or by contacting the Legislative Assembly Library. The word of the day was going.

Topics

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Chair. To my immediate right, Deputy Minister Russell Neudorf, Department of Transportation; to my far right, director of road licensing and safety, Mr. Steve Loutitt; and to my left, Ken Chutskoff, legislative counsel, Department of Justice.

The Chair

The Chair Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. Mr. Chutskoff, Mr. Neudorf and Mr. Loutitt, welcome back to the House.

Committee, again we are on Bill 60, An Act to Amend the Motor Vehicles Act. I will open up to general comments. Mr. Bouchard.

Robert Bouchard

Robert Bouchard Hay River North

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to discuss some of the distracted driving enforcement and kinds of distracted driving. I know we are talking about increasing the penalties for driving distracted, if the Minister could even maybe just talk a little bit more about that. I think we are talking about even suspending licences for periods of time, how that would work as far as if you got pulled over with distracted driving and you are getting suspended for your licence, how you would basically get that vehicle back home. Some of the practical parts of the enforcement of distracted driving.

The Chair

The Chair Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. Minister Beaulieu.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Within a two-year period, your second offence would be a 24-hour suspension. A third offense in that same period would be a seven-day suspension and a fourth offence would be a 30-day suspension. The individual, because they are not impaired, would be allowed to drive their vehicle home.

Robert Bouchard

Robert Bouchard Hay River North

Thank you. So, if you got pulled over with your second offence in two years, you are basically given a 24-hour suspension and the officer would tell you that you have to go home. I guess some of the questions I would have if that was me and I was in Yellowknife, obviously going home is a little shorter distance than someone driving back to Hay River. Would I have a day or two to get back home before I serve my 24-hour suspension or not? How does some of that practicality side of it work?

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

The suspension doesn’t come into effect until 24 hours after the violation.

Robert Bouchard

Robert Bouchard Hay River North

I am just wondering: if it is like a demerit system, after you have done it for so long a period then it doesn’t… If I get one every five years then the second one doesn’t affect me after two years. Just like the demerits, it would come off the system, or can the Minister clarify that?

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

There are three demerits for each violation. Three demerit points and after two years, within the two-year period, if there are no additional demerits then it would come off the books.

Robert Bouchard

Robert Bouchard Hay River North

The Minister indicated in his opening remarks about school zones and construction zones. If it was my second offence and I was doing texting or distracted driving for the second time, would that be more than a 24-hour suspension or would it be bumped up to the three-day suspension because I was in a school zone, for example?

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

The demerits would be the same; the suspension would be the same; the fine would be doubled from $322 to $644.

Committee Motion 146-17(5): Bill 64: An Act To Amend The Co-Operative Associations Act - Amendment To Clause 23, Carried
Consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bills and Other Matters

October 6th, 2015

Robert Bouchard

Robert Bouchard Hay River North

I’m not disagreeable to this process. I think we need to take distracted driving out of the hands of the drivers in the Northwest Territories. My question to the department is how do we expect this to roll out and do we have a campaign or an advertising campaign to go with this so that people understand and know that there is more severity to the program than we currently have? I know we rolled it out when we doubled the fines. There was a bit of an advertising campaign and it got a little bit of play. Are we expecting that with this type of increase in the suspension area?

The Chair

The Chair Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard. We’ll go to Mr. Neudorf.

Neudorf

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We, of course, will take advantage of this opportunity to promote the dangers of distracted driving with this, assuming this legislation is passed today. We will work with law enforcement agencies to promote the new laws and then we will have a public awareness campaign as part of that as well.

We will continue with our other campaigns that we have as well. Some of those are national campaigns that we are part of and some of them are our own advertising. We’ll just continue to generally promote the dangers of distracted driving.

The Chair

The Chair Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Mr. Neudorf. Continuing on with general comments on Bill 60, I have Mr. Hawkins.

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would encourage the department to investigate certainly the right approach and certainly I would say contact someone who understands good communication when we consider an updated campaign on distracted driving.

One of the issues I notice with people is that they still tend to hold their phone in their hand, and really what I think is a bit of an issue here is people are misinterpreting, in some cases, probably a very small percentage in all honesty, but misinterpreting what distracted driving really is.

Where people have learnt that using your cell phone is certainly holding it to your ear and talking on it normally while you’re driving and you still see people doing that, but occasionally what you do, if not more often, I see people drive around and they’re holding their cell phone in front of them while they’re talking. I can only assume they have it on speaker phone as they’re driving along and having it in front of them is best to describe it as maybe holding it in front of them in a manner that it’s just above the steering wheel.

I think, really, what my suggestion would be to the department is to take these types of things into consideration and explaining and maybe through some type of advertisement on saying, well, this is what distracting is, the cell phone in your hand, type of thing, and helping folks understand that this doesn’t change the argument that, well, I’m not holding it to your head now, it doesn’t apply. There are a fair bit of things they need to consider that folks need to be updated and I think it could be a case of misinterpretation, the fact that they don’t appreciate the complexity of it, or they don’t appreciate how simple, really, that message is, which is once you have the cell phone in your hand you now fall under the umbrella of distracted driving.

I just wanted to provide some thoughts on that.

The Chair

The Chair Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Minister Beaulieu.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The department is proposing to define use, so use would be holding, operating or touching a restricted electronic device.

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Well, I’m glad to hear that. It doesn’t surprise me from our earlier discussions, of course, that we had heard that those types of things are issues. I think I remember reading or hearing about the case in the Yukon where you’re arguing definition of what distracted driving is and what constitutes on the phone and definition on there, and that’s kind of what I’m really getting at, is that it’s great that we have a definition on the books but sometimes folks in practical sense don’t view it that way. So really what I’m suggesting is I encourage them through a public awareness campaign of some sort to show folks what’s right and not right. I’ll wait for the Minister’s comment and then I’ll change subjects.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

Those are good points. I thank the Member. We will take that into consideration when we’re rolling out the new act.

Robert Hawkins

Robert Hawkins Yellowknife Centre

Thank you for that, Minister. The other area that I have concern, although I have to admit it didn’t necessarily garner committee support, but it still doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter to me even less, which is the fact that I’m not convinced that the way we are proposing to change the distracted driving offences is the right direction when it comes to how we suspend.

I think, in my opinion, we should increase the value of the demerits, and once you’ve reached the limit of your demerits because these offences have now become very steep, that alone by de facto suspends your licence rather than leaving it down to judgment calls and about suspending people within a certain amount of time and telling them to give, well, you can drive home, but we’re going to pursue with paperwork.

I think we should let the process decide on its own. If someone is caught, I think the demerit process is you lose three demerits if you’re fined under the distracted driving, and I believe, if memory serves, you get a total of 15. If that’s not 100 percent correct, it doesn’t really matter, because the point I’m making is I suggest we bump it up quite a bit, because a couple fines and all of a sudden you now have to appear before a judge and explain your behaviour and why you cannot comply with the rules of the road. The way it’s intended now is that, I think, after your second one all of sudden you’ve got some explaining to do, as they say. I look forward to how that types out in translation or in the Hansard tomorrow.

The point is that I hate the thought of the subjectivity into it. I really like the cut and dry. I know the department heard my grievance in committee that day we had had the hearing, and I know that the likelihood of that being all of a sudden, miraculously, hey, wait a minute, we should change. That isn’t going to happen. I’m probably expecting a unicorn sooner to run through the Assembly any moment now and that ain’t gonna happen. I just wish it was different, and in my opinion I think it’s become more of an administrative issue, that it’s more of a headache as opposed to the way I’ve suggested that it just be attached to increase.

The other thing is, in my opinion, if distracted driving really matters that much, and it does, as we’ve seen all the research and we hear more and more about people who can’t comply, and we hear about the dangers and the type of behaviours and nightmares that it leads to, then maybe we should have the demerit points that reflects that social change.

Tom Beaulieu

Tom Beaulieu Tu Nedhe

We proposed, in the bill, suspensions because suspension and demerits go well together. In the bill, a specific offence on distracted driving will net you a suspension plus demerit points. If an individual does have a fifth distracted driving charge in a two-year period, they will be suspended indefinitely. I think they would use all their demerit points. What I can do is maybe ask Russell or Steve to add to this.

The Chair

The Chair Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Minister Beaulieu. We’ll go to Mr. Neudorf.

Neudorf

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the comments from the Member. There were a number of different options and ideas that we looked at. We did look at all other Canadian provinces and into the US states and what they’re doing to try to combat this problem, which rules are changing and becoming more strict, fines are increasing, suspensions, et cetera, and yet the problem still appears to be growing, so we need to be proactive to make sure that we address it as forcefully as we can.

We looked at all the different options and decided that a suspension would be the way to go for this. Working with law enforcement, we already do provide these types of suspensions related to drinking and driving, so it was appealing to the law enforcement community because they were aware of what’s happening. We also like the fact that it’s tied directly to the immediate conviction or the immediate problem of distracted driving, and it’s not demerit points where you can get demerit points for speeding or for distracted driving or any number of things, and if you get too many then you have to get called in and go through a review. But we liked the fact that the suspension was directly related to the distracted driving offence.

The Chair

The Chair Daryl Dolynny

Thank you, Mr. Neudorf. Mr. Hawkins.