The Queen v. G.(R.) 2021

The client left a bar and was driving behind two vehicles when he became impatient and decided that he wanted to pass the two slow moving cars in front of him.  As he did so, the car in the lead turned left into a driveway which resulted in the client’s truck hitting the driver side rear-end of the lead vehicle.  Police arrived and after some investigating made a demand on the client to provide a sample of his breath into a roadside device.  The client blew a “fail” and was detained for impaired driving and brought back to the police station to provide breath samples.  He ended up blowing well over the legal limit and was charged with impaired driving and driving “over 80”.  Mr. van der Walle carefully reviewed the case as well as the new impaired driving sections of the Criminal Code that were brought in by the Trudeau government.  Due to a major change in the wording of the legislation Mr. van der Walle came to the opinion that the Crown could no longer prove its case on “over .08” charges without filing a document called the “Certificate of Analyst”.  The Crown failed to serve the defence with this all important document prior to trial.  The trial began but part way through the Crown prosecutor, much to his credit, realized he had made a fatal error by failing to serve the critical certificate and dropped both charges by entering a stay of proceedings after the second witness got off the stand.  Not guilty of all charges, client did not have to testify.