I’m so glad you could join me today. I want to talk a little bit about blood demands that where the police make a demand for you to provide a sample of your blood to for them to try and prove that you’re over the legal limit of blood alcohol or have certain drugs in your system which may cause you be impaired or over a certain drug limit that the Criminal Code sets out. So if you’ve watched any my videos about, you know blowing over the legal limit, you will know that if the police come upon you, let’s say you’re swerving on the roadway, they pull you over and you’re slurring your speech and you’ve got an odour of alcohol in your breath. They’re entitled to make a demand for an Intoxilyzer breath sample to be provided the police station and then of course if you blow over the legal limit, there are 80 milligrams of alcohol in 100 mL of blood, 80 or over that is, you’ll be charged. Now what if, for example, you’re in a car accident, and you’ve broken your ribs and you can’t provide a breath sample because obviously you’re capable of blowing or you’re in extreme pain, you’ve broken bones in your face. This does happen, obviously it’d be taken to the hospital. In that situation if the police have reasonable grounds to believe you’re over the legal limit are reasonable grounds to believe you impaired by alcohol, they are able to make a blood demand. So a doctor or a nurse pursuant to the blood demand, you’ll be demanded that you comply with that. And they’ll take that blood demand the blood sample and that will be set at the center of Forensic Sciences for testing. And if it shows you’re over the legal limit, for example, you will be charged with blowing over legal limit. Now in that situation, you could refuse of course, a breath demand. The problem there is you’re going to be charged with the refusal to provide a blood sample and that carries the same if not, higher penalties in some circumstances, and impaired driving. I mean, the mandatory minimum fine was $2000 that could go way up from there. In that situation. Let’s say it appeared causing death, well of course you’re facing years in jail for the impaired and refusing that sort of thing. So that there’s the police have great powers in this regard that the blood samples taken by a professional in that situation, so, you don’t see it too often. It does arise of course; we’ve represented clients in this situation. In this situation, you should provide this sample of blank because if you don’t, you’ll be charged with a refusal and which is not good thing or particularly, if there’s, because you make maybe you’ll blow under the legal limit you We hope you do of course. Now, this also applies for situations where the police suspect or I should say on grounds that you are under the influence of drugs. So your ability to operate a motor vehicle is impaired by drugs. In that situation, they can demand a blood sample as well. You know, you’re not demanding a breath sample that’s for alcohol. And then of course that blood sample if you comply with it, which you should that’s going to be set up the Centre of Forensic Science. It’s now the Centre of Forensic Science is going to test that blood and determine what if any drugs are in your system at that time. The Criminal Code has per se limits so if for example, you have so many milligrams or nanograms of alcohol in your bloodstream, and there’s limits how the Criminal code you’re going to be charged with that offense. You could also be charged with impaired because you know cocaine at certain levels is per se, as an example, going to impair your ability to operate a motor vehicle. So, the police have a lot of powers in this regard. They do use them. Blood samples are more rare for alcohol but it does happen when you’re injured. Blood samples for drugs is fairly rare too because a lot of times the police will just take urine samples and urine samples don’t really prove a heck of a lot obviously show is that you have traces of a drug in your system which doesn’t mean you have it direct in your bloodstream and you may not be impaired but I will talk about that in another video how police take your in combination of urine to show traces of drugs and they do drug recognition evaluation tests to show that you’re impaired by drugs. So, there you have it. That’s basically a short very short and basic primer on blood samples. It’s a very complicated area of law as to whether they have grounds and our firm has a lot of these type of cases.
