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Twelve-year campaign may have an end in sight

George Sojka has been fighting to have the law changed since he lost his sister in a car accident in 2005
Helen Sonja Francis
Helen Sonja Francis was a registered nurse at Burnaby Hospital.

The federal Liberals are considering a Burnaby man’s wish to have the Criminal Code amended.

For more than a decade, George Sojka has been petitioning the government to change the law when it comes to obtaining a warrant to get a blood sample.

Sojka’s sister, Helen Sonja Francis, died in a car accident on Feb. 28, 2005, after the car she was in crashed near Houston, B.C. The driver, an ex-boyfriend, was allegedly impaired at the time.

The courts, however, deemed the incriminating evidence inadmissible because the warrant to obtain a blood sample was faulty. It was granted 13 minutes after the Criminal Code’s four-hour deadline. (In order for investigators to get a blood sample, a warrant must be obtained within four hours after an accident occurs.)

Sojka has since been advocating to get the warrant deadline extended to six hours.

Kennedy Stewart, MP for Burnaby South, has presented Helen’s Law in the House of Commons a number of times, but it has never passed.

Recently, Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould notified Sojka that his amendment has been grouped in with Bill C-46, a host of Criminal Code amendments related to impaired driving. (If passed, Bill C-46 would allow police to take a roadside breath sample without evidence that the driver is under the influence.)

The justice minister also informed Sojka the warrant deadline being considered is eight hours, not six.

The bill will be debated in committee as early as this fall, at which point it will then return to the House of Commons for another vote, and if passed, to the Senate.

“I feel quite elated considering the fact I’ve put in more than 10 years of working on this,” Sojka told the NOW. “It’s a bittersweet victory because a life is still gone that can no longer come back.”

He added he was “very surprised” the deadline was extended beyond the six hours.

Bill C-46 still has a long way to go before becoming law, according to Stewart. He said it’s tough to know how things will play out.

“It could be unanimously adopted in the house and the committee may not change it, and it goes to the Senate, and then the Conservative senators decide they don’t want this, or they want to split it into two bills,” the MP explained. “So we don’t know what’s going to happen there.”

If all goes according to plan, Sojka’s Criminal Code amendment wouldn’t be known as Helen’s Law since it’s part of a bigger bill. While that does bother him, he remains hopeful that something positive will come from his sister’s death.

“It’s unfortunate, but you know what, the bottom line is Helen has been recognized in all of this, the case has been presented to Parliament and something’s being done,” he said.