The IRP fix is in and British Columbians want to know what it means to them. More important right now is what it means to the people who received a Fail 90-day Immediate Roadside Prohibition before November 30, 2011. The short answer is that nothing has changed.
The legislation is silent on Fail IRPs issued before the law was found to violated the Charter in the ruling on November 30, 2011. So unless the Government introduces some other transitional legislation, this matter will be resolved before the courts.
Will the legislation impact the petitions/appeals now before the courts? The matters are being appealed on other points of law so they should still go ahead. The law was unlawful. People should still be entitled to a remedy.
We understand that the Government is arguing that all of the people who were given Fail IRPs should not be entitled to a remedy and those who had the prohibition and Interlock etc. lifted should be required to serve the duration of the prohibitions and punishment. It is almost comical, but as we have said, the very existence of the BCLiberal Party is at stake, and they do not want an $80 million boondoggle to be on the minds of the voters come the election one year from now. So they intend to buy time by taking this to higher levels of court.
So if you are wondering when your matter will be resolved, we are sad to say that you will need to keep wondering. If the Government really accepted the Court’s ruling, they would have simply cancelled all of the prohibitions and refunded everyone their money. But as we have pointed out time and again, fairness is not part of their DNA.
If you are still without a license because of a 90-day IRP, give us a call. If it was for Fail we can get you back on the road fairly quickly. If you need the interlock removed because of work or some such issue, call us and we can take care of that too.
What do we think of the new legislation?
A number of Government employees read our blog almost every day. We noted many hits on the two posts devoted to the bullshit second sample (here and here). They are two of the most popular posts in the last two months. And then the Government changed that part of the legislation, although it was not part of the ruling in Sivia. We will have more on this at a later date, but the point is that what we write here can influence the changes to the legislation. And we are not here to help the Government to re-jig a scheme that should be scrapped. So although we have been very candid in the past, we may withhold some commentary until the legislation has been passed.
Important, however, is that this is now a full on replacement of the Criminal Code sections concerning over .08 driving. In Sivia the old version of the law barely slid past the legal test that permitted the BC Government to pass such legislation. If the old one was on the edge, this new one is well into the realm of the legislative power of the federal government. Consequently it is not within the legislative power of the BC Government and should not be permitted to stand.