The MinInternet of Justice has tabled a bill to impose criminal liability for extreme self-induced intoxication leading to serious personal injury offences:
I am certainly not an expert on this issue, and I don’t object to the idea that people who choose to get really drunk should be responsible for their actions to at least some degree. How many times has this defence been successfully used? My understanding is very rarely.
What if you become extremely intoxicated involuntarily?
Canada…
Yes, that was my question. I’m surprised that it was ever a defense, except perhaps for a clueless young teenager getting drunk for the first time.
I question whether people really don’t know what they are doing when extremely drunk if they are still sufficiently mobile and coordinated to carry out bad acts. The fact that they may not remember what they do is not the same thing at all.
It just seems such an obvious glaring loophole to criminal culpability if this defense is ever allowed.
As the article above says, the reason for this new law is that the Supreme Court did rule, last month, that it can be allowed as a defense.
The reason it was disallowed was an issue of legal definitions, and the court essentially said the law needed to be restated slightly. So this is what happened.
It should perhaps be clarified that the phrase “tabled a bill” means something very different in Canada than it means in the United States.
Intoxication used to be taken very lightly in the United States until about (IIRC) the early 1970s or so. Drunk drivers, in particular, were not treated very seriously no matter what harm they caused, and often got off with very light sentences. Then the lobbying group Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) created enough political pressure in the United States to create the strict drunk driving laws we have now.
From the article preview cited above:
This phrase caught my attention. Does this mean someone was acquitted, then the acquittal was withdrawn, then reinstated? In Canada, is an acquittal not final in the first place?
This is largely accurate, from my recollection, though it was up until the early '80s that drunk driving wasn’t seen as a big issue. MADD was formed in 1980, and quickly started to have an influence. It was 1984 when the federal government was able to effectively raise the drinking age to 21 nationwide, and states began to toughen their DUI laws in that same era.
Sorry about that - I thought I was creating a new thread.
Yes, an acquittal can be overturned on the basis of errors of law at the trial level and a new trial ordered.
Too late to add/edit: from a general societal POV, up through the 1970s, drunkenness was still not seen as being as a big issue. In the '70s, entertainers like Dean Martin and comedian Foster Brooks were still, very popularly, portraying themselves as drunks in their appearances on TV and in nightclubs (even if they were likely actually sober at the time).
Here’s an article from last month about the SCC decision:
And the bill to try to fix the problem has passed the House of Commons. Now goes to the Senate.