Quebec coroner calls for tougher drunk driving penalties in line with rest of country

A Surete du Quebec police car is seen at their headquarters in Montreal on September 10, 2024. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christinne Muschi) (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press)

A Quebec coroner says that if the province’s penalties for drunk driving had been in line with the rest of the country, a driver who slammed into a motorcyclist in 2020 would not have been on the road when the fatal accident occurred.

Coroner Geneviève Thériault says the man who was behind the wheel had been pulled over by Quebec provincial police for driving erratically less than an hour before the head-on collision.

Officers had him blow into a test that found the level of alcohol in his blood was between 50 and 99 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millimetres of blood, but it could not confirm whether he was above the Criminal Code’s legal limit of 80 mg per 100 ml of blood.

Provincial police say that breathalyzer results in the grey zone between 50 and 99 must be accompanied by other signs of obvious impairment to make an arrest, and in this case they were not sufficient.

The coroner’s report released today says they told him he could be over the legal limit and urged him to call a friend or wait a few hours before getting back on the road.

Fifty-two minutes later, the crash took place on a provincial highway about 50 kilometres from where he had been stopped, with 64-year-old Bernard D’Aragon, an experienced motorcyclist, killed on impact.

Quebec is the only province that has not gone farther than the Criminal Code and established a legal alcohol limit of 50 milligrams per 100 milimetres of blood or lower — after which drivers can have their licences revoked or face other sanctions.

Among the coroner’s recommendations for the province’s automobile insurance board and the Transport Department is to amend the province’s Highway Safety Code to ensure administrative penalties are imposed on drivers with a blood-alcohol concentration of 50 mg per 100 ml or higher.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 22, 2025.