I cringe every time I hear people resorting to the same logical fallacies time and time again. When someone says "What's next?", my brain leaps to "marrying animals?" before they finish the thought, because that's the kind of 'slippery-slope' argument some right-wing conservatives spew when rallying against gay marriage. When someone says "What's the difference?", my brain leaps to "while they're both fruit, the color, shape and consistency..." before they get to express which two unalike things they wish to insist are the same, because I know that they're not going to be the same thing at all.
People are up in arms right now about the police not requiring a reason to pull someone over and possibly search their vehicle. If my memory of grade 10 Law class serves me right, the police have been able to search vehicles for little or no reason since before the late 80s. Little has changed in that regard. But it looks like something is changing - something powerful. But it's irrelevant, because this attempt "empower" the police to do something about impaired drivers is just another fine example of government pretending to do something about a problem by bringing in "tough" legislation, that realistically will have little or no impact. It's a lot easier for government to discuss something, write a bill about it, and tell everyone they've worked on it, than to actually do something, and if anything should be offensive about this bill, it's that. I'm not so concern with the supposed erosion of my civil rights as the fact that said supposed erosion is not being traded for anything effective. Yes, I'd trade away some of my privacy, if I got some real results in return. Hell, you can search my car while I'm indoors asleep if you want, provided you can assure me you'll catch, arrest, try, convict, sentence, and somehow rehabilitate the putzes that steal the coffee money from unlocked vehicles on my street once or twice weekly. (Lock the doors folks, they're too lazy to actually break in.)
The fact of the matter is that when it comes to impaired drivers in this province, the police catching and arresting them doesn't seem to be the issue: light sentences and a "catch-and-release" justice system is the issue. It's evidenced in the fact that you see people with multiple charges, including "driving without a license" and "driving while suspended". They get caught. They get tried. They get sentenced. And they just keep doing it again and again. And it's not just drunk drivers, it's all the other petty criminals too. If the armed robbers aren't caught that night by the K-9 unit, they're nabbed within two weeks, and "breach of probation" will always be added to the list of charges.
I'm not worried about this change because I truly don't expect to see the constabulary suddenly pulling people aside randomly; they're far too busy already with the list of fuckwits whose names, addresses, and license plates they surely have memorized by now.
Grease the pegs however you like, it's the revolving door that's the problem.
