November 15, 2010

Mr. Anderson: Okay. Well, to review, for those of you following at home, the amendment that I brought forward is that Bill 16, the Traffic Safety (Distracted Driving) Amendment Act, 2010, be amended in section 2 in the proposed section 115.5 “by striking out clause (b).” What that would mean is that it would strike out the ability of the minister to make regulations prescribing prohibited activities for the purposes of section 115.4. And 115.4 is the section where prohibited activities while you’re driving are included. So included in there is reading or viewing printed material; writing, printing or sketching. I think the hon. Member for Calgary-Fish Creek said that she saw someone reading printed material, actually reading a book, on her way down the highway coming here. That was brutal.

An Hon. Member: Was it you?

Mr. Anderson: It wasn’t me. But she saw it. She was distracted by it, by someone else reading.

The other one was engaging in personal grooming or hygiene and then any other activity that may be prescribed in the regulations.

The problem I have with this section is that it again goes back to what we talked a little bit about earlier. You know, ministers come and go. The Minister of Justice is a very reasonable person, but she won’t always be the Minister of Justice. Who knows what minister will come after? So I think it’s disrespectful to the House to give this type of latitude to a minister, to allow something that’s so intrusive. I mean, when you’re talking about something someone cannot do in the privacy of their own vehicle, that’s quite an intrusive law. It’s not to say that we shouldn’t have laws that govern things like that, but it is very intrusive when it happens. You’re changing, you know, someone’s ability, what they can and can’t do in the privacy of their own vehicle, which is a piece of property that they own, while driving, of course.

I think that it would be wise – if you’re going to change the rule surrounding something so intrusive, it should come back to this House and have a discussion on it and bring an amendment for it. Say: “Well, you know what? We want to add.” I mean, it says that reading or viewing printed material is prohibited under these. What if the minister one day says: “You know what? Printed material is not good enough.” You know, you have that Kindle. That’s electronic, so really that doesn’t fall under it. It’s not written; it’s electronic material. You can’t read or view printed material, but you can read or view electronic material. Would that include a GPS system? What would that include? What wouldn’t it include?

The point is that the minister could come at a later date and say, “We’re not going to allow people to read their GPS because that’s distracting” or “We’re not going to allow people to turn their radio off and on because that’s distracting” or whatever. The point is that if there’s going to be something changed in the law like that, the minister should come before the Assembly and explain why she or he feels that that needs to be done. Otherwise, I think we shouldn’t pass it. It shouldn’t be allowed to be just thrown into a regulation. Why would we pass this?

You know, we talk about prohibiting reading or viewing printed material, writing, printing, or sketching, all these other things. Why do we even have them in here? Why don’t we just say that we’ll just leave it to regulation, let the minister decide what’s prohibited or not? Essentially, that’s what they’re doing. You’re naming some, and then you’re saying: but the minister can add or subtract as many prohibited activities as he or she wants. I think that’s an unreasonable amount, an excessive amount, of ministerial latitude and power, and I just don’t think that it’s right.

I guess I would say, you know, that the amendment we’re talking about illustrates this, but this bill really is of an intrusive nature. I just wonder if this is really going to do anything to stop people from actually doing these prohibited activities anyway. I mean, honestly, what would really make more sense, you would think, is that instead of saying that you cannot do something and that we’re going to slap a small ticket on you if you get caught doing it, what you should do is hammer them if they’re weaving all over the rode, if they cause an accident, or something like that. You just nail them with liability.

You know, their insurance skyrockets. They lose their car for a period of time or their right to drive for a period of time if they actually are swerving on the road or if they’re actually running stop signs while looking at their PDA or whatever. You hammer them if they actually do something wrong on the road because they’re distracted, not just because they may have glanced – because I worry, too, Mr. Speaker.

Usually if you are making a phone call while you’re driving, I know that when I do it – and obviously I can’t do it here pretty quick – I’ll usually do a quick 403, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, so I can keep my eyes on the road as much as possible. If I were to put that phone down here so that the police or the person viewing me couldn’t see me, then I’m doing this; I’m starting to tap and stuff, and I’m even more distracted.

I don’t think people are actually going to follow this law, predominantly. There will be a few who do, but I think, generally speaking, that it’s just going to be like any of the other traffic laws, unfortunately, that are ignored. I think that a lot of them wouldn’t be ignored if it would be a stronger penalty if they do something wrong. For example, you can think of when someone’s drinking and driving and they hit somebody or they get in an accident while they’re drinking and driving. That’s when you just have to absolutely hammer the individual, make sure that they’re losing their licence, that they get in trouble. That, I think, would be more effective in keeping dangerous drunks off the road than any other activity.

I think that we’ve got to go more towards a system where we are punishing people who are actually being a menace on the road as opposed to somebody, in this example, who’s driving and maybe looking at some printed material, maybe at some directions while they’re driving. Maybe they’re not sure what turn to make, so they take a look at the piece of paper so they can make the right turn at the right street, and then they’re in violation of the law. That just doesn’t make any sense. It’s too intrusive. Now, if they’re looking at something and they’re swerving or they’re talking on their phone and they’re swerving around or they’re in an accident, you can document when they were on the phone. You can document that, and you can punish them accordingly with a very serious penalty.

Again, I just don’t see how this is really going to help anything. I mean, I think everyone agrees that we shouldn’t be distracted while we’re driving. I don’t think anyone disagrees with that. We should be paying attention, but think of all the things that do distract us while we’re driving. I mean, there are the passengers in the car next to you.

Dr. Brown: What about all those kids?

Mr. Anderson: Exactly. Those four kids in my SUV going crazy back there. I mean, you wonder why I’m a little tense in question period sometimes. It’s because I’ve got four kids in the back of an SUV all the time. That’s a lot of pressure.

There are lots of things that distract. Does that mean that we should ban kids from our cars, you know, that we shouldn’t have kids in our cars? They’re distracting. They’re very distracting. You should hear my little guy, my two-year-old, when he drops his bottle or something. I’m driving, and he’s just going nuts because he can’t find his bottle. I mean, there’s nothing more distracting on Planet Earth than that. Well, maybe a few things, but it sure doesn’t feel like it at the time. [interjection] Yeah. Well, I don’t have to watch them while I’m in my car. Thank goodness.

There are all kinds of distractions. We don’t ban kids from our car. We don’t ban the GPS from our car. We don’t ban radios and CDs and audio books. We don’t ban those things. We haven’t banned eating a hamburger here. Is eating one of the prescribed things? I don’t think it is. No, it’s not. So you can still eat. What’s the difference between holding a cellphone to your head and chewing down a Big Mac? Honestly, in some ways the Big Mac is far more distracting. It’s slopping all over you. There are pieces of food going all – I mean, it can be very distracting. A milkshake, a Diet Coke: all these things are very distracting things.

We’re banning a few things; we’re not banning other things. I just don’t see how this is really going to help safety. Even if you banned all that, even if you decided to ban the hamburgers and you ban your kids from vehicles – you’re going to ban all those things so you have no distractions whatsoever – you take the radios out and the headsets out and everything out, you know, there are all kinds of studies out there that say that wireless phones and hands-free phones are just as distracting as the ones that you hold up to your ear. If we’re not going to ban every possible distraction, then why even pass a law about it, especially when people aren’t going to listen to it? They’re just not, by and large. A few will, but a lot won’t.

I think education would be a much better thing to do. I mean, we don’t ban cigarettes. Cigarettes are by far more harmful than distracted driving, but we don’t ban them. We educate. [interjection] Well, that’s right. We do ban them in public places for second-hand smoke, but we don’t ban it in other ways. We do give public education. We do make sure that we educate the public about how bad smoking is for them, and because of that the smoking rate over time has gone down.

It’s the same, I believe, with texting while driving and the use of cellphones and other things while driving. If you have good public education on it, over time people will make, generally speaking, rational decisions. Those who choose not to make rational decisions you can absolutely hammer with fines and all kinds of bad things when they actually do something that is illegal or dangerous on the road.

There was a member across the way, but I forget which one, who took exception to the fact that some people are very safe when they drive, that they can hold a phone up to their head and drive very safely compared to somebody who isn’t a very good driver and has both hands on the wheel. I think we all know that. It’s true. You know, not everyone has the same abilities. It’s just like, you know, you’ve got some people who can skate and stickhandle the puck really well at the same time, and then you’ve got others that can’t do that well, so they’re not very good hockey players. Some people can do two things well at the same time; that’s just kind of a gift. I’m sorry that not everyone has it in this Assembly, but that doesn’t mean you have to take away the use and enjoyment of my gifts, hon. member. That’s right: the use and enjoyment.

Anyway, I want to just make it clear that I don’t think that it is proper for the minister to have such discretion because, frankly, she or a future minister could add kids into this legislation. Kids are distracting; you’re not allowed to have kids in your car. Or dogs: dogs are distracting; can’t allow dogs in your car. Hamburgers: can’t have hamburgers. Radio: you’ve got to take the radio out. I think that that is too much discretion to give to a minister.

Mr. Hinman: What about doughnuts?

Mr. Anderson: Doughnuts are very distracting. You go by a Tim Horton’s or something like that, just that in itself, you know, you have to turn your head and, “Man, I’d really like to have a doughnut and a coffee or hot chocolate.” [interjection] Or a taco from Taco Bell, that’s distracting: “Man, I could use one of those.”

So we just have to make sure that we don’t give the minister so much discretion. Again, it goes back to the larger problem. The reason I don’t want to give the minister so much discretion is because this is an overly intrusive bill. Unfortunately, it’s one that the public seems to want. I think what they want is more safety; they want less distracted driving. I don’t think they want more intrusion. I don’t think that this accomplishes what the public wants. The public might say: “Oh, good. They’re passing something on distracted driving.” But they have to realize that that’s not going to solve the problem that the public is concerned about.

Hopefully, we’ll talk about some clauses later that I think will address that issue, and we can maybe make this bill a trial bill to see if it works for a couple years. Then, hopefully, it will be proven. If it works, great. I mean, if it does decrease distracted driving, great, but if not, then we can put it on the shelf for the future and can remember it just as a history lesson about why big government solutions and intrusive government solutions don’t work.

With that, I look forward to hearing any questions or comments on the amendment.

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