TORONTO - Whether someone kills an innocent person with a gun or by getting behind the wheel after drinking, the result is the same, says provincial police Commissioner Julian Fantino.
In an open letter to the people of Ontario, Fantino suggested people are becoming complacent about drunk driving.
"I remain incredulous that, with all the knowledge, awareness, education and exposure dedicated to the prevention of this particular crime, Canadians have either tuned out the message or tuned themselves out of the problem in the misguided belief that the consequences of drunk driving will happen only to someone else,'' Fantino wrote.
So far this year, 70 people have died in crashes involving alcohol on roads patrolled by the provincial police.
Fantino expressed frustration with how the justice system deals with accused drunk drivers after they are nabbed by police.
"We will also need timely political intervention to fix loopholes in current drunk-driving laws that have become the hobbyhorse for defence lawyers to extricate their drunk-driving clients from the consequences of their criminal conduct,'' Fantino wrote.
He also pointed to a poll suggesting the number of Canadians driving while impaired is rising, and said "all this leads me to believe that Canadian society has developed a tolerance for this particular crime.''
One of the keys to combating the problem, Fantino said, is more RIDE checks. This year, officers checked more than 650,000 vehicles between Nov. 28 and Dec. 26, an increase of two per cent from last year.
The number of 12-hour licence suspensions increased by nearly 40 per cent from the 657 issued last year.
"The only positive outcome is a decrease in fatalities, to date, from 35 in 2006 to 27 in 2007 (during the RIDE period),'' Fantino wrote.
"This 22.9-per-cent decrease is, I believe, directly related to our increased efforts to detect and apprehend drunk drivers before they either kill themselves or, as is too often the case, kill totally innocent people.''
