It’s 2025 and impaired drivers are still killing Canadians—Peel Police starts annual RIDE campaign

On September 13, six more names were added to the MADD memorial in Brampton’s Chinguacousy Park. 

Since Mothers Against Drunk Driving erected the monument in 2023 to pay tribute to the mothers, fathers, sons and daughters who have lost their lives to impaired driving, 164 names have been added to the columns of wooden pillars.

The MADD memorial in Brampton’s Chinguacousy Park to those killed by drunk drivers.

(City of Brampton)

Devastated families, with members permanently destroyed by their crippling depression, are linked directly to each name. 

Mason Berube and Devon Tinus. 

The two 12-year-olds were heading home from a London Knights game with Berube’s father in 2009. All three were killed when an impaired driver slammed into them in the middle of an intersection.

“I don’t wish this on any parent,” Tinus’s mother said in 2023. 

Angela Smits and Michael MacLean.

The couple were killed in May 2004 when their vehicle was struck head-on by an impaired driver. 

“It’s any parent’s worst nightmare to lose a child, and to go through this, has been a tremendous loss for all of us,” Patricia Smits, Angela’s mother, said in January 2014. 

Betty Taylor. 

The 69-year-old grandmother and great-grandmother was walking home from her son’s house when she was hit by a impaired driver fleeing from police. The impact catapulted her through the front window of a nearby storefront. She was on the phone with her son at the time. 

“I heard screeching tires and then the phone went dead. I knew something was wrong, so I got dressed and got on my bike and rode up to the scene of the accident, where I recognized my mom’s hair and her coat,” her son Bill explained to CHCH in 2015. “I looked over to the left and saw her little cart she used, her laundry cart, and I just yelled ‘mom’, and threw down my bike.”

These are just five stories of heartbreak and loss captured on Brampton’s memorial. There are 159 more attached to the other names—and thousands more like them across Canada. 

According to statistics from MADD Canada, 9 charges are laid every hour in Canada for impaired driving related offences. Despite the human cost of this preventable crime, it seems many drivers still don’t get it. 

“It’s an epidemic,” Dawn Regan, the Chief Operating Officer of MADD Canada declared Monday. “These are shocking numbers. We want people to remember there is a human cost to impaired driving. Hundreds of Canadians and thousands more are injured every year in preventable crashes.”

Regan joined Peel Police officers to launch the force’s annual Festive RIDE Campaign. From now until December 31, Peel Police officers will be carrying out increased roadside checks to try and counterpunch the increase in impaired driving observed throughout the holiday season.

Last year, Peel officers investigated more than 12,000 vehicles; laid 131 impaired charges and issued 85 license suspensions.

Throughout the first weekend of the 2025 Festive RIDE, police checked 700 vehicles, administered 181 roadside tests and laid five impaired charges. 

As of October 31, Peel police have laid 787 charges for impaired driving so far this year; that’s more than two every single day. 

More and more, police are charging drivers impaired by drugs, often cannabis. 

Drug impaired driving has left a deep scar on the Region of Peel. Residents were shocked in 2020 when Brady Robertson, a 20-year-old at the time, was behind the wheel of a blue Infiniti G35 with more than eight-times the legal limit of THC in his system as he sped toward the intersection of Torbram Road and Countryside Drive in Brampton going at least 135 kilometres an hour. Robertson struck the SUV of Karolina Ciasullo which was waiting at the lights with her three daughters inside—all under the age of 6—shortly after noon on a clear sunny day. All four were killed and Robertson was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison in 2022—a conviction he is appealing, which is still going through the courts. 

Deputy Chief Marc Andrews says this “scourge” of impaired driving needs to stop.  

“Driving while impaired either by alcohol or drugs remains one of the leading causes of serious motor vehicle collisions in Canada,” he said Monday. “The world is collisions, not accidents, they are all avoidable.”

Regan says public awareness campaigns are crucial to letting drivers know police will be on the roads and waiting. 

“Well publicized, highly visible campaigns like this increase the perceived likelihood that if you drive impaired by alcohol, cannabis or other drugs, you’re going to be caught.”

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