Developing National Indicators for Drug-impaired Driving in Canada

The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) initiated a three-year project to collaborate with agencies and experts across Canada to identify and recommend a set of national indicators to better measure the impact of DID. [...] The purpose of the final project report is to inform decision makers in policy, government, law enforcement, transportation, health and public safety sectors of the measures that experts and frontline personnel recommend these agencies use as the most valuable to better understand and reduce DID. [...] Although some agencies are receiving additional support and funding to address and monitor the impact of DID (e.g., Public Safety Canada initiated a five-year program to increase the number of officers trained in detecting and assessing impairment and to hire analysts to report on DID data collected in the different jurisdictions), more capacity building is required across various agencies. [...] Lack of broad, consistent and accessible data on the issue of DID limits the ability of frontline personnel, practitioners, researchers and the public to address or properly understand the issue. [...] The overall goal of the project and the work of the Advisory Committee is to help fill this gap in measuring the impact of DID in Canada in order to help reduce the associated risks and occurrences of DID.