Impaired bill restricts freedom

Dear Editor: This December, the federal Liberal government is granting police across the country the power to randomly, and for no reason at all, pull drivers over and demand breath and saliva samples.

On the surface this seems a valiant and noble weapon in the fight against impaired driving.

But is this a case of the cure being worse than the disease?

For one, this opens the floodgates to sanctioned racial profiling. Imagine being a person of colour or a Muslim woman wearing her niqab driving in an affluent predominately white neighbourhood.

What if you are on your way to a doctor's appointment that you've waited four months to get?

Or to catch a flight overseas to begin your annual two week vacation and with no flight cancellation insurance?

Secondly, our forefathers fought and died to keep us free from governments that would chip away and slowly erode the rights that we enjoy today.

It is a slippery slope that starts with your car, in the name of “public safety,” then quite slowly becomes listening to your phone calls, reading texts and emails.

Eventually, it culminates with entering and searching your home and person — all without reason and in the name of public safety.

Curiously, this new amendment only covers alcohol impairment, not cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine or hallucinogens like LSD and psilocybin.

It also ignores the latest statistics that reveal that distracted driving has surpassed impaired driving as the leading cause for traffic accidents as well as traffic deaths.

Most rational people would agree with Benjamin Franklin who stated “Those who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Election Day 2019 let’s send a message to Ottawa that we won’t allow the Liberals and those who sided with them to quash what so many paid the ultimate price to gift us.

Robert Brown, Cranbrook