Skip to main content

Canada puts $2.5m into tackling drug-impaired driving

The government of Canada is investing CAN$2.5 million over five years to tackle drug-impaired driving in the province of Prince Edward Island. The move is part of a CAN$81 million package to support public and road safety activities. Funding will help train more police officers in standardised field sobriety testing and drug recognition expert evaluation. The money will also be used to purchase approved drug screening devices and develop standardised data collection and reporting practices to analyse
August 21, 2019 Read time: 2 mins
The government of Canada is investing CAN$2.5 million over five years to tackle drug-impaired driving in the province of Prince Edward Island.


The move is part of a CAN$81 million package to support public and road safety activities.

Funding will help train more police officers in standardised field sobriety testing and drug recognition expert evaluation. The money will also be used to purchase approved drug screening devices and develop standardised data collection and reporting practices to analyse trends of drug-impaired driving.

Bill Blair, minister of border security and organised crime reduction, says the government wants people to understand the dangers of driving while impaired by alcohol and drugs.

“Stronger penalties and law enforcement alone can’t resolve the problem; public education and awareness are important pieces of making it socially unacceptable,” he continues. “Today’s investment ensures that frontline police officers have the tools they need to detect drug-impaired drivers to keep our roads safe.”

Related Content

  • DfT to review UK traffic enforcement
    July 22, 2019
    The Department for Transport (DfT) in the UK is to carry out a review into road policing and traffic enforcement in a bid to improve highway safety. The two-year review - jointly funded by the DfT and Highways England - will look at how road policing currently works, its effectiveness and areas for improvement. The DfT will work with the Home Office and the National Police Chiefs’ Council. A pilot programme is expected to follow in 2020, looking at new initiatives to see what works best for reducing roa
  • ITS needs to talk the talk as well as walk the walk
    March 24, 2014
    The US automated enforcement market is in rude health as the number of systems and applications continues to grow and broaden. Jason Barnes reports. Blessed and cursed – arguably, in equal measure – with a constitution which stresses the right to self-expression and determination, the US has had a harder journey than most to the more widespread use of automated traffic enforcement systems. In some cases, opposition to the concept has been extreme – including the murder of a roadside civil enforcement offici
  • Report highlights ways to make roads safer for pedestrians
    November 23, 2012
    A report released by the International Transport Forum (ITF) at the OECD highlights the role of national governments in improving pedestrian mobility and proposes twelve measures to create safer walking environments. The study, entitled Pedestrian Safety, Urban Space and Health, was prepared by a working group of transport experts and urban planners from nineteen countries and the World Health Organisation under the leadership of the ITF. The report comes to a number of conclusions, including the fact that
  • Data collection becoming a crowded market
    October 26, 2017
    New ways of gathering data can revolutionise traffic and travel management, so is the writing on the wall for the traditional methods? Jon Masters reports. There are two big industries that stand to be revolutionised by massive increases in data – healthcare and transportation, says Finlay Clarke, the UK managing director of the smartphone sat nav traffic app, Waze. “At present we’re really only at the start of how cities, in particular, will be transformed,” he says.