British Columbia’s solicitor general says the province will move to get more drunk drivers off the road with legislation that includes immediate sanctions against impaired drivers.

The Canadian Press writes that Solicitor General Kash Heed said Friday that B.C. will soon have among the most aggressive anti-drinking-and-driving laws in the country. The legislation due this spring includes a massive public information campaign aimed at young and new drivers.

“We are going to take assertive steps here in British Columbia to deal with impaired driving on our streets,” said Heed. “We will probably have the most aggressive approach at the end of the day to deal with this.”

Heed would not discuss details of the proposed new legislation, other than to say it will give police more power to keep the roads free of impaired drivers.

Since last May, drivers caught with a blood-alcohol level between .05 and .08 in Ontario automatically have their licenses suspended for three days. Manitoba has zero-tolerance for drinking and driving infractions for drivers with five years or less experience.

Andrew Murie, CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, said the national organization has been lobbying provincial governments to toughen their penalties for drivers caught with blood-alcohol content levels of .05 per cent. “Obviously, we’d be supportive of it,” he said.

Most provinces use the .05 threshold as a warning tool or to hand out a 24-hour suspension, without laying criminal charges.

Bob Rorison, Metro Vancouver’s MADD spokesman, said when Europe and Australia dropped their legally impaired limit to .05, deaths and injuries dropped by 35 percent.

Rorison said MADD wants governments to adopt laws and policies that keep all drinking drivers off the road.

“It’s only laws that change people’s habits,” he said. “If people have the habit of drinking and driving—if they are accustomed to that—we want to change their habit of having the so-called ‘few beers’ and taking to the roads.”

Rorison said British Columbians who want to drink at their neighborhood establishments should plan to walk there or take public transit or taxis. “We want to lower the deaths and injuries caused by drunk driving,” he said.

MADD says four Canadians die every day in drunk-driving accidents and 207 people are injured.

The president of the B.C. Association of Chiefs of Police said his organization welcomes changes that make it easier for police to get more impaired drivers off the road.

Deputy Chief Clayton Pecknold, of the Central Saanich Police Department, said police chiefs across Canada have been lobbying the federal government to amend the Criminal Code to make impaired driving laws less complex for police.