Alternative to incarceration of some impaired drivers

The holidays always bring some reoccurring themes: family connection, gifting to one another and a message from law enforcement on not drinking and driving. This messaging comes in the form of Reducing Impaired Drivers Everywhere (RIDE) here in Ontario. Law enforcement is given extra funding from the Government of Ontario to focus on this specific issue heading into December and the holidays. Unfortunately, every year people drive under the influence and end up killing or injuring thousands of people a year. While there has been a significant decline in impaired driving since this first became a societal issue; there is still more work to do.

In Canada, 2,430 people were involved in motor vehicle collisions that result in their death (driver, passenger, pedestrian, etc.) of which 1,451 were influenced by alcohol, narcotics or both [2013 statistics] (1).

The traditional thought processes of political activists; support groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and politicians have been to strengthen the existing laws to reduce the allowable limit of alcohol in a person’s body. Changing rules regarding operating and handling of vehicles among other pushes in the criminalization realm. Individuals face jail time and other monetary fines for impaired operation of a motor vehicle. In my perception, we are going to eventually get to a point where we can no longer reduce impaired operation of a motor vehicle (barring technological changes like autonomous vehicles) because people will fall into two groups. Group A will be people who went out for a night and felt that they were okay to operate their vehicle. Group B is the ones who simply do not care; and will drive their vehicle repeatedly under the influence. Group A is individuals who can be influenced to make changes and made an error in judgment. This article is targeted at Group B; because the current system of deterrence does not effectively change their minds from the act.

My proposal to reduce individuals inside of Group B would be free taxi service paid for by the government to eliminate the need for these people to need to drive. It can be cost-effective to government coffers and more importantly socially responsible to the rest of the public. Essentially; the government would provide habitual offenders with a debit card that could only be used for transportation purchases to get people from point A to point B within the province of Ontario. It would have the goal of eliminating impaired driving by these individuals by eliminating their need to drive. Reduce the negative societal impacts associated with impaired driving; such as fatalities, injuries and emotional trauma. A secondary impact of this program would be the reduction in costs to emergency services, healthcare, and reduced insurance claims. A reduction in impaired driving by alcohol (potentially marihuana) will be an incredibly important investment and long-term save lives and money.

(Example) If in Ontario we have 1000 people a week that drive impaired; this program would be targeted at the minority who have previous impaired charges on their record. The program would be tailored to the 50 or 100 people who are habitual offenders. A program client would be permitted to $150 a day maximum of taxi rides within the Province of Ontario. This number could be adapted to rural settings where rides may be longer or the costs in these areas are higher. The costing for the program clientele would mean a daily cost of $7,500 to $15,000 if fully charged by the users. An annual cost of $2,520,000 to $5,040,000 plus the associated costs associated with running the program (overhead, management, logistics, etc.). While these numbers seem high, there are costs associated with the criminalization of these individuals as well. In 1994, the Government of Ontario determined the costs associated with a motor vehicle fatality was $5.3 million dollars for emergency services, healthcare, and other costs factored in. This does not include the costs of the emotional trauma that people are required to go through when dealing with these incidents. Emotional trauma for individuals injured; emergency services and families all of which currently cause tremendous issues for our society as a whole. The cost determined by the government in 1994 works out to just north of $8 million dollars (2017). Providing this program to repeat offenders alone allows for a savings of $3 to 6 million dollars per accident. Correctional Service Canada pegs the cost of holding an offender for a year at $116,000; which is significantly more than running the program.  One of the known downsides associated with criminalization and incarceration is that individuals tend to become better criminals. They learn from the processes how they were caught and from other inmates how to avoid their downfalls. The last thing we want is people who are driving impaired becoming better at beating the system and avoiding getting caught.

A program like this would likely be initially plagued by the determining factors for categorizing these individuals as habitual or not. There are medical decisions which can be determined by extensive medical research and policy decisions. This program could be fraught with the thought of pandering to individuals when hardcore criminalization is thought to be the answer. One has to simply attend provincial offenses court to see how many individuals have been charged with highway traffic act offenses; such as operating a motor vehicle with no insurance and suspended license caused by previous impaired operation charges to see that the deterrence factor does not work on certain people. These people are the ones maiming and killing people on the roads which is why we need a second diversion to stop impaired driving before it happens. As I said before, I do not believe that impaired operation of a motor vehicle (barring technological changes) will ever end. Even then it will still likely occur as we can never eliminate something entirely from society. Humans are notorious for errors and misjudging their abilities, and this is worse under the influence of alcohol or narcotics, but these people can be deterred from future issues. There is a group of habitual offenders that disregard all forms of deterrence and conduct themselves as they please. These are the ones who are the focus of this piece and the policy changes to medicalizing the issue.

While not perfect; we need to look at other means of making our communities and roads safe. This is just one option for consideration.

 

 

 

 

References:

http://madd.ca/pages/impaired-driving/overview/statistics/ (1)
R. vs. Badesha (2008)
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator/

 

 

Collaboration Between Lakehead University and other Government Agencies

The Orillia Soldiers Memorial Hospital board of directors announced that they are starting a process to redevelop the hospital and plan for the future of the facility. They are looking at the potential options to meet the current demands of the community and into the future. A requirement of this planning by the Government of Ontario is that one of the options considered is a complete redevelopment on ‘green space’. Typically; I view this to be the least effective and least productive method for moving forward as green space is often away from established areas and can promote urban sprawl. In this instance I believe that there is an opportunity here to establish a new facility while creating new and exciting partnerships between other governments and governmental organizations. One of the options that the hospital should consider is a partnership with Lakehead University to create a university hospital much like those seen at larger campuses in the United States. This facility could provide a partnership that creates the future model for intergovernmental cooperation and the training pipelines necessary to provide the educational and real world experiences for future professionals. This collaboration provides benefits to Lakehead University; the Ontario Government; the City of Orillia and Georgian College. Below is a presentation of what each group has to gain and offer to this option.

Lakehead University

The campus was established in Orillia in 2006 and later established a permanent campus into a large green space in West Orillia shortly after. It currently serves approximately 1,500 students and is the only university in Simcoe County. Laurentian University was set to establish their satellite campus in the City of Barrie in 2015 which would have served 3,000 students but this was not picked by the Ontario government for funding. The Government of Ontario is currently looking to establish new campuses further into the GTHA region and much of the financing is being focused there.  The Lakehead Orillia campus is set for growth as both the City of Barrie and Orillia are expecting their population to grow significantly in the next 10 to 15 years. It is well positioned for growth as the campus has significant space requirements to expand their facility. The current issues pertaining to growth at this campus is the lack of available financing to continue expanding facilities and lack of space for new programs. The negatives for the campus can be used as collaboration pieces for the new hospital campus. The abundance of space means that the university can offer cheap land to the hospital in return for shared space in the new facilities. These shared spaces can be used in conjunction with one another to offer state of the art training facilities for university students and hospital patients. A practice like this is already in place at the Georgian College Barrie campus; if an accident were to damage the Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) they could transfer patients to the training facility on campus and still have the same quality of care. The difference for this campus would be the buildings would be shared instead of stand alone buildings. Students in these facilities would get the opportunity to interact and observe the real world operation of a hospital. These shared learning facilities also provide the university with the opportunity to add additional degrees to attract students to the facility. Courses like Nursing, Business administration, Information technology are all some of the potential options to attract students to the campus. Lakehead University also has its own medical school which produces doctors at the Thunder Bay campus; were they to provide an additional satellite facility on the campus they could provide the same mandate of improving medical care to rural areas to Simcoe County. A collaboration between the hospital and the university opens up research opportunities for the academics within the facility and commercial opportunities for developing medical technology. In short; Lakehead’s current issues of lack of funding for expansion and the resulting issue of lack of space could be mitigated by this cooperation.

Orillia Solders Memorial Hospital

The current hospital is running into the issue of lack of space and existing facilities that are aging and not meeting the demand of the citizens. Some of the buildings are from its original construction and there have been additions on the building as its grown. The benefit of the expansion into the Lakehead space is twofold. One; they get a new facility which will be designed to meet the demands of the community and designed for future growth. This facility will be able to meet the requirements for accessibility purposes; the planners will have the reduced stigma associated with mental health hence providing more space for staff to reduce stress and more room for addressing mental health within the community. Secondly; they get a partner in the cooperation with Lakehead which provides them with the next generation of nurses, business administrators among other important roles. This means that when they need to expand they don’t look purely at the Ministry of Health for funding they can also look for the Ministry of Universities and Colleges. This additional funding opportunity allows them to get new technology faster and better meet the needs of the community. Leveraging the knowledge at Lakehead University could also allow them to attract research investment into the hospital. A smaller version of university avenue in Toronto, ON could be an example of collaboration between universities, research companies and hospitals leveraging each others strengths to further one another. In short; the OSMH gains a new facility where they meet the demands of a growing community for the next 25-30 years and gains access to new funding/research opportunities.

City of Orillia

The City of Orillia has done a lot of work to better support the expansion in West Orillia with the development initially of a single bus line serving Lakehead University to the expansion of a second one. They have also invested in a multipurpose sports facility which gets extensive use and an industrial park which is set to be home to the new OPP detachment and Hydro One research/service facility. The collaboration between these Lakehead University and the OSMH does provide some initial issues but I feel provides long term benefits to the community and the city. Short term the city has to deal with a large parcel of land in an established part of the community moving out to the fringes. This would likely cause a depreciation of land values of those homes and businesses close by to the hospital. Long term the city would gain a large parcel of land that it could influence the redevelopment of that part of town with. That could be the catalyst for new multi use developments which brings commercial and residential to that area including new tax income. There is a lot of opportunity for the community to reuse this land to provide benefits for the long term of the community. The continued development of Lakehead University also has important benefits to the community. Housing development in this area of town has expanded significantly in a short period of time providing employment and income to city coffers. With a community population of 31,000; 1,500 students annually attend the Lakehead campus on September 1st of every year which means the community grows by almost 5% overnight which has a significant impact on the businesses within the community. The City of Orillia has invested a lot of time and money into this part of the community to address its growth and expansion. The collaboration between Lakehead and OSMH would provide significant benefits to the community as a whole but could have some detrimental short term effects.

Georgian College – Lakehead Collaboration

Lakehead University and Georgian College have come together to provide additional programs that “offer the benefits of a college diploma and an university degree”. While this is beneficial to both campuses it is currently focused more on the Barrie campus then Orillia as Georgian has more space to offer these programs. Furthering the collaboration between these two groups could again provide fruits in the Orillia campus. Georgian college has a number of programs pertaining to health which would be beneficial to the new collaboration. Students at the Georgian Barrie campus have access to very high tech and realistic technology which makes them attractive candidates for future employment. Programs such as nursing could take advantage of the investment Georgian College has made into these facilities and complete a diploma there; then complete their degree at the university campus which would have ample workplace opportunities for training with the merged facilities. Nurses could have the opportunity to do two years in Barrie in those facilities and then come to Orillia to attend the theory part of nursing and the hands on experience of being in a shared learning space. This would provide students with the hands on experience they need to be highly sought after candidates and provide work spaces with employees who have real world experience coming into the work site. This makes it highly valuable for all parties to work together on providing the opportunities that students need to make something like this work. Continuing the collaboration provides highly sought after students and makes these two campuses attractive to applicants as they offer the best job prospects.