Iqaluit city councillor wants crackdown on drunk driving
Random weekend blitz nabs 6 alleged impaired drivers
Coun. Kyle Sheppard, front, says he’s “fed up” with impaired driving in Iqaluit. On Nov. 24 and Nov. 25, City of Iqaluit municipal enforcement carried out sobriety and road safety checks. As a result, six drivers were taken off the road for alleged impaired driving. (File photo)
An Iqaluit city councillor wants something to be done to curb drunk driving.
“Both my colleagues here at council and community members are quite fed up with it,” Coun. Kyle Sheppard said during Tuesday’s council meeting.
He had it included as an agenda item during Tuesday’s meeting where RCMP were scheduled to give a monthly report to council, and days after the city’s municipal enforcement officers conducted a surprise blitz that nabbed six alleged impaired drivers.
Of those, four saw their licences suspended for 24 hours and two received 90-day licence suspensions due to the amount of alcohol in their system and previous suspensions, according to a public service announcement released Tuesday. These two drivers were taken into custody and charged by RCMP, the announcement said.
Sheppard said that judging by the number of people who were fined over the weekend, not many people were expecting municipal enforcement to be out.
“There’s been a lot of complacency developed with people who do drink and drive, due a lack of monitoring the roads adequately in the evenings,” he said.
RCMP have laid 98 impaired driving charges between January and the end of October this year, which is slightly less than last year’s total of 104 for the same period last year.
Steve England, the city’s chief administrative officer, said municipal enforcement will continue to do sobriety checks on Friday and Saturday nights, adding the department is looking for more money to do more of them.
The city is also about to start discussions with the territorial government and the RCMP about creating a public safety program and plan.
“It’s beyond just drinking and driving, there’s many other issues, such as public drinking,” England said.
RCMP keeps data on alcohol-related calls for service as well. This year there have been 5,627 of these types of calls, compared to last year’s total for January to October of 5,697.
The discussion comes at the heels of the resignation of Jack Anawak from city council Nov. 6 in the face of a drunk driving charge. Anawak had been sworn into council days before the incident that led to him being charged.
Municipal enforcement also said the weekend blitz caught a taxi driver unlawfully transporting, carrying, or having liquor.
Sheppard said he does not have the specifics of the incident.
But as the chair of the taxi review committee, Sheppard said it’s something he’ll be looking into.
If you can afford booze and a car, you can afford a $9 cab ride. Only a matter of time before someone gets killed.
Enough of the cash only taxi need to be able to take debit card like when you are in Ottawa. I can pay debit for snack take out but not a taxi!
simple, get rid of either vehicles or alcohol. removing either one will eradicate drunk driving.
I like both, But i dont use both at the same time (other then ride in a car sometimes after some booze). I also dont use either of them all the time, sometimes i walk sometimes i dont (when not drinking), and some time i drink and some times i dont.
Please dont get ride of either, but make it more severe when someone does DUI and have more checks…. also remember New Brew I know plenty drink and drive leaving there.
Throw a taxi chit on my bar tab, some of us don’t carry cash. Uber doesn’t exist.
WINNER WINNER WINNER of the lamest excuse for drunk driving. I do not carry cash, the bar didn’t give me a taxi chit and there is no Uber. If this is the excuses people are using for drunk driving its pathetic, be an adult who is reaches the minimum threshold of responsibly and keep 10 bucks in your wallet, or spend the extra 10 bucks and have the cab stop at the ATM. The Storehouse, Legion, The Lounge all have ATM’s.
STRONGER PUNISHMENT….. PERIOD
Prohibition does not work. Throwing out a number like 5,627 shows absolutely NOTHING. 80% of those are repeat calls to the same house, give us actual stats that mean something… A slap on the wrist is just dumb and curbs nothing.
Kyle Sheppard… you say your tired of these problems but (take Jack for instance, this isn’t a first offence … or a second… he’s not learning.) punishing everyone for a few bad apples does nothing.
GN just reduced the amount allowable for permits, reduced the amount of sales at the beer/wine store in Rankin, we are going in the wrong direction. This just drives bootlegging prices up and we go back to the days of drinking as fast as possible to get drunk.
If restricting the amount of alcohol one can purchase at the B&W store or reducing the amount allowed on import permits does drive up bootleg prices then that is a deterrent to buying bootlegged alcohol.
Supply and demand, people will still buy these.
The law of demand holds that the demand level for a product or a resource will decline as its price rises, and rise as the price drops.
But products like alcohol and tobacco are known by economists to have an inelastic demand, which means that demand stays the same even if the price rises. For these products, people pay the higher price and will cut back on other purchases instead. That’s why governments tax those products so heavily. Because there is an inelastic demand, demand will continue for those things even if they are heavily taxed.
Cool story, and possibly true for some people, but at a broad level the evidence does not agree with you.
“Several decades of international research show that increasing the price of alcohol through interventions such as excise taxes, for example, is one of the most effective approaches for reducing consumption and alcohol- related harm at the population level (Wagenaar, Salois & Komro, 2009; Babor et al., 2010).”
https://www.ccsa.ca/sites/default/files/2019-05/CCSA-Price-Policies-Reduce-Alcohol-Harm-Canada-2012-en.pdf
“Effects of Prices on Consequences of Alcohol Abuse. Many studies have shown that in addition to reducing alcohol use and abuse, increased prices also decrease the adverse consequences resulting from alcohol use and abuse.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3860576/
Did any of these studies mention bootlegging? Raising prices will certainly reduce consumption among non-addicts. Alcoholics on the other hand, will spend the baby’s milk money for another can of Molson Dry.
will, looks like our property taxes are going up soon, once again,
Sheppard chairs the taxi committee that keeps raising cab fares and continues to support the absurd per passenger per trip fare. Perhaps he should start working for the people to scrap these absurd policies, and that would help to ease this issue.
Good to hear that they want to crack down drunk drivers
But they should also put the light on the crack abuse too
Crack and booze mixed together is an ever worse idea then just the latter alone
Would be interesting to see what a cab from say New Brew to Apex be under the time and distance method that is used in the south.
anyone know that formula?
Is it more or less then $20 (if two people shared the ride)
Probably right around $20. How about a cab from North Mart to Plateau? That would be about $10 in the south, even if 2 people were in the cab. A couple living in Plateau ends up spending an extra $36 just to go grocery shopping, as if living in the north isn’t already expensive enough.
Consequences like losing a licence for drunk driving, good. How about education? Campaign in bars and elsewhere in town to show nasty images about people dying because of drunk drivers and appropriate messages about it? Campaign to appropriately shame drunk drivers ? Or to positively encourage and normalize the taking of taxis when drunk? And mental health supports so people rely less on drinking? And yes, for the proud, selfish, irresponsible ones who would drive drunk: taxi chits. Muti prong strategies is what we need for our social problems, but is drunk/impaired driving our biggest one? Maybe not yet until someone dies …