Street-racing law Overreach on speeding

The only surprise in the fact that a small-town Ontario judge has declared the province’s street-racing law unconstitutional is that it took this long for a court to reach such an obvious conclusion. The law, which came into effect two years ago in the emotional wake of a series of fatal accidents caused by flagrantly irresponsible drivers racing their modified vehicles, always inhabited a grey area.

Section 172 of Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act prohibits citizens from driving their cars “in a race or contest, while performing a stunt or on a bet or wager.” If a police officer suspects a driver of doing so, he or she can immediately seize the suspect’s licence and vehicle; upon seizure, the licence is automatically suspended for one week and the car is impounded for the same length of time. Pending conviction in court, the driver faces a minimum fine of $2,000 and can be imprisoned for up to six months.

Regulations define “stunt” as, among other things, driving at speeds of more than 50 kilometres an hour above the limit. With few exceptions, this one type of “stunt” has become the one and only way Section 172 is enforced, effectively turning a law to prevent street racing into a law to punish lead feet.

Such was the case of the grandmother in her sixties who accelerated to 131 kph to pass a semi-trailer truck in an 80-kph zone on a highway near Kingston. Upon overtaking the truck, she decelerated to 110 kph, but it was too late: She had been clocked by a police officer as doing more than 50 kph above the limit. Her car was impounded, her licence seized, and she was lumped in with the Vin Diesel wannabes who soup up their Subarus and race them down busy roads in a haze of testosterone and nitrous oxide.

Ontario court Justice Geoffrey Griffin overturned her subsequent conviction, saying the law violates Section 7 of the Charter, which specifies no one can be deprived of “life, liberty and security of the person except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.” Since speeding is an absolute-liability offence, a person caught speeding is guilty regardless of intent or any mitigating factors, and imprisonment can result from a charge to which there is hardly any defence.

It’s a welcome ruling. In the two years since the law came into effect, as many as 15,000 otherwise law-abiding Ontario drivers caught driving excessively fast have been no less harshly treated than the deliberate, premeditated and entirely negligent street racers who see public roads as private playgrounds. The Crown plans to appeal, but the Ontario government should instead amend the statute and separate the overenthusiastic grandmother on her way to see her newborn grandchildren from the scofflawswho brought about this overreaching legislation in the first place.

From Monday’s Globe and Mail Last updated on Tuesday, Sep. 15, 2009 02:57AM EDT

Former Alberta MP Rahim Jaffer has been charged with drunk driving and cocaine possession.

Mr. Jaffer, husband of Tory MP Helena Guergis, was pulled over early Friday morning in the village of Palgrave, Ont., north of Toronto, when a general patrol officer noticed his breath smelled of alcohol, according to the Ontario Provincial Police. An investigation followed and Mr. Jaffer’s licence has been suspended for 90 days.

Mr. Jaffer, 37, was MP for the riding of Edmonton-Strathcona from 1997 until a surprise defeat in last year’s election.

He was born in Kampala, Uganda, and immigrated to Edmonton with his family as a boy to escape persecution under the iron-fist rule of Idi Amin.

He was just 25 when he first arrived in Parliament as an MP.

Ms. Guergis addressed the charges in a short e-mail Wednesday night. “I take this very seriously. I love my husband. I will wait for further information before I make any comment,” she wrote.

Mr. Jaffer is scheduled to appear in Orangeville criminal court on Oct. 19.

Mr. Jaffer was staying in Angus, Ont., in his wife’s southern Ontario riding of Simcoe-Grey when his vehicle was pulled over.

This is not Mr. Jaffer’s first brush with scandal. In 2001 his executive assistant resigned shortly after he impersonated Mr. Jaffer in a national radio interview. The assistant, Matthew Johnson, maintained that Mr. Jaffer had no knowledge of the hoax.

After several months in the political woodshed, Mr. Jaffer was re-elected in 2006 and named Conservative caucus chairman by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

He was a fun-loving, gregarious MP popular on the Ottawa party scene before romance blossomed with Ms. Guergis. They were married last Oct. 15 – one day after the federal election.

Mr. Jaffer took his defeat at the hands of NDP rival Linda Duncan hard. Hers is the only seat in Tory-blue Alberta not held by the federal Conservatives.

He has recently worked for Green Power Generation Corporation, which helps bring alternative energy technologies to market.

With a report from The Canadian Press

Kate Hammer: Globe and Mail

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.