Impaired Driving Lawyer in Toronto

An impaired driving charge, often called a DUI, is a criminal charge under the Criminal Code of Canada. It is prosecuted in the Ontario Court of Justice, and it runs alongside a separate set of provincial licence penalties that start the moment you are charged.

The Criminal Code groups these offences under section 320.14 and 320.15. The most common charges in Toronto are:

• Impaired operation. Operating a vehicle while your ability is impaired to any degree by alcohol, a drug or both.
• Over 80. Having a blood alcohol concentration of 80 milligrams or more in 100 millilitres of blood within two hours of driving.
• Drug impaired and blood drug concentration. Driving while impaired by a drug, or with a prohibited level of a drug such as THC in your blood within two hours of driving.
• Refusal. Failing or refusing, without a reasonable excuse, to comply with a lawful demand for a breath, blood or roadside sample.

Civitas Law is a team of legal professionals under the leadership of lawyer Nasibeh Mehrpouyan. We act for people charged with impaired driving across Toronto and the GTA, in English, French, Farsi, Russian and Serbian.

Ontario applies administrative penalties as soon as police charge you, before any court date and whether or not you are later convicted. For a reading of 80 or more, a failed or refused test, or a failed drug evaluation, a first occurrence brings:

• An immediate 90 day licence suspension
• A 7 day vehicle impoundment
• A $550 administrative monetary penalty, plus a licence reinstatement fee
• A mandatory education or treatment program

A reading in the warn range of 50 to 79 milligrams is not a criminal offence, but it still brings a roadside suspension of 7 days for a first occurrence, an education program and a $250 penalty. These provincial consequences run on their own track. The criminal case decides whether you face the longer court ordered prohibition.

The Criminal Code sets mandatory minimum penalties that a judge cannot go below. For a first offence, the minimum fine is $1,000, rising to $1,500 where the blood alcohol concentration was 120 to 159 milligrams and $2,000 where it was 160 or more. The minimum fine for a first refusal is $2,000. A second offence carries a minimum of 30 days in jail and a third offence a minimum of 120 days.

On top of the court sentence, Ontario applies its own licence consequences. For a first conviction these include a suspension of at least one year, a mandatory education or treatment program, an ignition interlock condition for at least one year once your licence is reinstated, and a six month period with zero alcohol and zero drugs. A second conviction within 10 years brings a suspension of at least three years, and a third a lifetime suspension that may be reduced after 10 years if strict criteria are met.

Every case turns on its own evidence, and no lawyer can promise an outcome. What we can do is examine each step the police took and explain your realistic options. The review usually covers:

• The stop and the demand. Since 2018, police can demand a roadside breath sample from any lawfully stopped driver without suspicion. The legality of the stop itself, and of any later demand for an approved instrument test or a drug evaluation, still matters.
• Your right to counsel. Whether you were told about your right to speak to a lawyer and given a real chance to do so before the breath test, under section 10(b) of the Charter.
• The breath testing. Whether the approved instrument was operated properly, whether the samples were taken as required, and what the test records and disclosure show.
• Timing. Whether the samples were taken within the time limits the Criminal Code relies on.
• Evidence of impairment. What the officers observed, video from the scene or the station, and any innocent explanation for those observations.

Where the Charter was breached, evidence such as breath readings can sometimes be excluded. Where the evidence is strong, the focus shifts to the most favourable resolution available and to protecting your licence, your job and your status in Canada.

• Immigration status. Impaired driving is treated as serious criminality for immigration purposes. A conviction can make a permanent resident or temporary resident inadmissible to Canada. If you are not a Canadian citizen, tell us at the first meeting so the criminal and immigration sides are planned together.
• Work. Jobs that involve driving, professional licences and security clearances can all be affected.
• Insurance. Expect higher premiums or difficulty finding coverage after a conviction.
• Travel. A conviction can create problems entering the United States and other countries.
• Your record. A conviction stays on your record until a record suspension is granted, which in most cases is available only five years after a summary sentence is complete, or 10 years after an indictable one.

1. Keep every document police gave you, including the release paperwork, the notice of suspension and the impound notice.
2. Write down what happened while you still remember it: where you were, what you ate and drank and when, the stop, the testing and what you were told about a lawyer.
3. Do not drive during the roadside suspension, and follow every condition on your release.
4. Do not discuss the case on social media or with anyone other than your lawyer.
5. Get advice before your first court date so disclosure can be requested and reviewed early.

Read our guide to impaired driving penalties in Ontario for more detail on the licence rules.

Book a consultation online (30 minutes, $150 plus HST, paid when you book) or call (647) 271-1646. The phone is answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Office meetings are by appointment.

People call every charge in this area a DUI, but refusal is its own offence with its own logic. Section 320.15 of the Criminal Code makes it a crime to fail or refuse, without a reasonable excuse, to comply with a lawful demand for a breath sample, a blood sample, a physical coordination test or a drug evaluation. The Crown does not need to prove that you were impaired or that your blood alcohol level was over 80. It needs to prove that the demand was lawful, that you understood it, and that you did not comply.

Two demands come up in almost every file:

• The roadside demand. Since December 2018, an officer who has an approved screening device with them can demand a breath sample from any driver they have lawfully stopped, with no need to suspect alcohol. This is mandatory alcohol screening under section 320.27(2). You do not have a right to speak to a lawyer before this roadside test. The result is a pass, a warn or a fail, and a fail gives the officer grounds for the next demand.
• The approved instrument demand. Where the officer has reasonable grounds to believe an offence was committed, usually after a roadside fail, you are taken to the station or a breath testing vehicle for two samples on an approved instrument. Here you do have the right to speak to a lawyer first, and the police must give you a real chance to do so.

Refusal is not only saying no. It includes repeatedly failing to give a usable sample after being shown how, walking away, stalling until the officer treats the delay as a refusal, or agreeing and then not following through. A reasonable excuse is read narrowly: a genuine medical inability to blow, backed by evidence, can qualify, while fear, confusion about the law, or wanting to call a lawyer before the roadside test generally does not.

Refusal cases are defended on the demand, not the drinking. Our team looks at whether the stop was lawful, whether the officer actually had the screening device at hand when making a roadside demand, whether the demand was clearly worded and understood, which is a real issue for drivers whose first language is not English, whether a medical or language problem was raised and ignored, and whether the station process respected your right to counsel. Where the demand was not lawful, there was nothing to refuse. The penalties on conviction track the penalties for impaired driving set out earlier on this page, with the higher minimum fine on a first offence.

The over 80 offence is about a number, not about how you drove. Under section 320.14(1)(b) the Crown must prove that within two hours after you stopped driving your blood alcohol concentration was 80 milligrams or more of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood. The offence is framed that way on purpose. Before December 2018 the Crown had to relate the reading back to the moment of driving, and arguments about alcohol still being absorbed from a last drink, sometimes called bolus drinking, could succeed. Measuring the level within two hours after driving closed that door. If you were at or over 80 at any point in that window, the offence is made out unless a narrow exception applies.

The exception in section 320.14(5) covers drinking after driving. It applies only where all three parts are met: you drank after you stopped driving, you had no reasonable expectation that you would be asked for a sample, and your drinking was consistent with having been under 80 while you were actually driving. A person who gets home, has a drink, and is then visited by police investigating a collision can fit it. A person who sees the cruiser lights and reaches for a bottle cannot.

The Crown proves the number through the approved instrument results, usually by filing the qualified technician's certificate under section 320.31. For the results to be conclusive the Code requires that the instrument was in proper working order and operated properly, that two samples were taken at least 15 minutes apart, and that the two readings agree closely, with the lower reading used. When those conditions are met the readings are treated as proof of your level, and saying that you felt fine or had only a couple of drinks does not answer them.

That is why over 80 cases are defended on process and on the Charter. We examine the disclosure for the instrument records, the calibration and maintenance logs, the time of the stop and the time of each sample, whether the technician was qualified, and whether you were given a real chance to call a lawyer before you blew. We also look at the roadside: a stop without lawful authority, or a screening demand made without the device present, can take the readings out of the case under section 24(2) of the Charter. Where the case cannot be beaten, the readings themselves still matter, because the minimum fine rises with the level and the difference between a reading just over 80 and one far above it shapes what resolution is realistic.

Cannabis being legal does not make driving after using it legal, and the same Criminal Code sections that cover alcohol cover drugs. There are two separate ways to be charged. The first is impaired operation under section 320.14(1)(a), where the Crown proves your ability to drive was impaired to any degree by a drug, by alcohol, or by both together, using what the officers saw and what the evaluation found. The second is a blood drug concentration offence under section 320.14(1)(c) and (d), where the Crown proves the level of a drug in your blood within two hours of driving. For THC, the main active component of cannabis, the Code sets a lower band that is a summary offence with a fine, a higher band that carries the same penalties as over 80, and a combined alcohol and THC level that is an offence even though each on its own would be under the limit. For several other drugs, including cocaine, methamphetamine, LSD and ketamine, any detectable amount is an offence. A medical cannabis authorization is not a defence to the concentration offences.

The investigation runs in stages, and each stage has its own legal test:

• Roadside. An officer who reasonably suspects a drug in your body can demand a standardized field sobriety test, the walk and turn, one leg stand and eye tracking routine, or a sample of oral fluid on approved drug screening equipment. A fail on either gives grounds for the next step.
• The drug recognition evaluation. At the station a specially trained officer, known as a DRE, runs a twelve step evaluation: pulse and blood pressure, eye examinations, divided attention tests, muscle tone, checks for injection sites and an interview. The officer then forms an opinion about which category of drug is involved and demands a blood or urine sample to confirm it.
• The blood sample. For the concentration offences the sample should be taken within two hours of driving. If it was taken later, the Crown must rely on a toxicologist to work back to the earlier level, and that opinion can be tested.

These cases are more open to challenge than alcohol cases because the science is less settled. THC levels in blood climb and fall quickly, do not track impairment the way alcohol does, and can remain detectable in regular users long after any effect has passed. The DRE evaluation is an opinion built on observations with innocent explanations: fatigue, anxiety, a medical condition, or the stress of arrest. Our review covers the grounds for each demand, how long each stage took, whether the protocol was followed and recorded, the chain of custody for the sample, and the toxicology report itself.

When an impaired, over 80, drug concentration or refusal allegation is tied to a collision in which someone was hurt or killed, the charge changes character. Sections 320.14(2) and (3) create the offences of operation causing bodily harm and operation causing death, and sections 320.15(2) and (3) do the same for a refusal where the driver knew or ought to have known they were involved in a crash that caused injury or death. Causing bodily harm is a hybrid offence with a maximum of fourteen years in prison when prosecuted by indictment. Causing death is a straight indictable offence with a maximum of life imprisonment. The minimum fines still exist on paper, but where a death results, Ontario courts regularly impose penitentiary sentences, and a long driving prohibition, up to life, usually follows.

The Crown has to prove two things that are not needed in an ordinary impaired case. First, that the impairment or the prohibited level was real, using the same breath, blood or evaluation evidence described above. Second, causation: that your driving was a significant contributing cause of the injury or death. That second element is where many of these cases are fought. Collision reconstruction, road and weather conditions, the actions of the other driver or a pedestrian, mechanical problems and the medical cause of death all come into play, and the defence usually needs its own reconstruction and medical opinions, not only the police report.

These investigations also look different from a roadside stop. Blood is often drawn in hospital, which raises questions about consent, about warrants under section 320.29 and about the use of hospital records. Statements made to police at the scene or in hospital, often while injured and in shock, are scrutinized under the Charter. Police frequently lay dangerous operation causing bodily harm or death under section 320.13 alongside the impaired charge, and the two are defended together; our dangerous driving page explains that offence. A stunt driving charge under section 172 of the Highway Traffic Act is a provincial matter and is covered on its own page.

Bail is a live issue from the first day. Release is still the norm, but the Crown often asks for a surety and a condition not to drive, and the case takes longer than a routine file because of the volume of disclosure. Our bail page explains how a release plan is built. If you are not a citizen, the immigration side has to be planned from the start, because a conviction for any of these offences is serious criminality under immigration law.