Impaired driving / Over 80

The accused was stopped in the early hours after leaving a licensed establishment. The officer's notes described a brief traffic-related observation followed by a request for a roadside screening sample. The client was then transported for evidentiary breath samples that produced readings above the legal limit.

On paper the Crown's case looked straightforward — a driving observation, an approved-instrument reading, and a Certificate. The path into a viable defence lay in the details of how each stage of that sequence was carried out.

Two constitutional questions ran through the file: whether the officer had the necessary reasonable grounds to make the breath demand, and whether the breath-sampling procedure met the safeguards the Criminal Code and s. 8 of the Charter require.

The prosecution's ability to rely on the presumption of accuracy in s. 320.31 depends on those safeguards being observed. Where they are not, the reading is either inadmissible or its weight collapses.

Disclosure was reviewed in full — officer notes, in-car video, dispatch recordings, calibration records for the approved instrument, and the qualified technician's certificate.

A Charter application was prepared under ss. 8, 9 and 10(b), targeting the reasonable-grounds analysis for the demand and the timing intervals between stop, demand, and sample.

Cross-examination of the officer was prepared around the specific observations relied on for the grounds — the client's speech, coordination, odour, admissions, and any inconsistencies with the video record.

• Reasonable grounds under s. 320.28 — how the officer arrived at the belief the client had operated while impaired or over 80.
• The 'as soon as practicable' requirement for the breath demand and for taking samples.
• s. 10(b) rights — timing, wording, and any implementation delay before contact with counsel.
• The continuity of the approved instrument — service history, calibration, and any documented anomalies.

Impaired driving and Over 80 files are rarely won or lost on the reading alone. The procedural record — how the stop unfolded, how the demand was made, how counsel access was implemented, how samples were taken — is where a defence often lives or dies.

A careful, disclosure-first review is the starting point for any file of this kind at Saggi Law Firm.