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"Any alcohol tonight?"
When Ontario's annual year-end crackdown on drunken driving is launched Wednesday, this will be the familiar question greeting drivers who are stopped at the roving network of police checkpoints under the Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere program.
Each year, roughly 16,000 people in the province are convicted of driving with a blood-alcohol reading of at least 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, the legal threshold. And at no time are more drunks scooped up and charged criminally than in the weeks before and after Christmas.
There are many more drivers who've had two or three drinks and who escape with a 12-hour licence suspension, the cost of towing and storing their car overnight, a cab ride home and possibly a bad fright.
Best of all for those near-drunks, the insurance company will likely hear nothing of their indiscretion.
Things are about to get much tougher, in Ontario at least.
Under a recent but little noticed amendment to Ontario's Highway Traffic Act, the rules will toughen significantly between now and next year's Christmas blitz. Instead of that 12-hour shock, drivers in the "warn" range will soon face an automatic three-day suspension and likely a painful hike in their auto-insurance premiums.
Under the current rules, a 12-hour suspension is incurred when a person's blood-alcohol level is in the "warn" range, which legally means a reading from .05 to .08 milligrams.
In practice - though few drivers realize it - it can be slightly greater than that, running as high as .1. That's because the standard, handheld Breathalyzer used at most roadside tests only yields an approximate result.
It's unwise to rely on that imprecision. If the police officer suspects you're in the .08-and-up range, you'll go to the next level: a bigger, more sophisticated breath-analysis machine that produces an exact reading.
In a country with some of the world's toughest drunken-driving laws, the consequences of a .08 reading or higher are profound: a criminal record, a driving ban for at least a year and an insurance premium that soars by thousands of dollars.
And that's for a first offence.
But most of the actions at R.I.D.E. checks are less severe.
"On an average spot check, you might get one or two impaired over 80, and probably 15 to 20 12-hour suspensions," said Sergeant Brian Bowman of Toronto's central traffic division.
For now, the 12-hour suspendee who collects his licence from the police station the next day emerges relatively unscathed.
But under Bill 203 - the same legislation decreeing that anybody driving 50 km/h or more above the posted speed limit forfeits both car and licence for seven days and faces a minimum $2,000 fine - that's going to change.
The bill's clause stiffening the temporary licence-suspension rules has not yet been proclaimed and may not take effect until late in 2008.
But when it does, countless thousands of emboldened drivers with a blood-alcohol reading of at least .05 are in for a shock. They will still escape a criminal record, but not the three-day suspension.
A second "warn" offence will mean a seven-day suspension and a mandatory education course on the perils of drinking and driving. A third? A 30-day suspension, a further education session and the installation of an expensive ignition device that won't allow the car to start until the driver has blown into it.
Most punitive of all, the suspension will be recorded on the person's driving record, which the car insurer usually scrutinizes at renewal time. After a first such offence, the insurance bill will rise by 30 to 40 per cent, predicts former police officer David Matheson, president of the X-Copper paralegal group that specializes in contesting traffic tickets and driving-related criminal charges.
Mr. Matheson regards the upcoming rule change as extreme because it will automatically impose a pre-conviction penalty carrying heavy repercussions.
"They're banking on the fact that everything will be over and done with before you have an opportunity to fight it, there'll be no forum to hear you whine about it," he said.
"No matter how you slice it, it's a breach of your right to freedom of movement."
Down at the Toronto Police Service's central traffic office on Hanna Avenue, Sgt. Bowman views things differently. Having seen first-hand plenty of the alcohol-related deaths that account for one-quarter of all traffic fatalities in the province, he lauds the toughened law for the same reason Mr. Matheson criticizes it.
"They're dangerous because they've lost their inhibitions," he says of drivers who hit the road after a few drinks.
"So we're really excited about this because it makes for a strong penalty."
The Ontario law will not be unique in Canada. In six other provinces, temporary licence suspensions already show up on a driving record. But the three-day suspension for blowing between .05 and .08 in a first offence appears to break new ground.
The provincial government doesn't expect the law to be proclaimed until late in 2008 because, unlike Bill 203's relatively straightforward high-speed driving provisions, new alcohol-driving rules require fresh regulations, new computer programs, a public-education campaign and training for police and Ontario Ministry of Transportation staff, ministry spokesman Bob Nichols said.
