OTTAWA — A new report is recommending the legal blood-alcohol limit for drivers stay where it is.

Drivers who exceed the .08 limit -- 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood -- can be criminally charged. The limit was incorporated in the Criminal Code in 1969.

Impaired driving is the No. 1 criminal cause of death in Canada. But the House of Commons justice committee says in a report tabled Thursday that, without proof a lower limit would boost safety, practical considerations must take precedence.

"While the committee is eager to see fewer deaths and injuries on the road as a result of impaired driving, it is concerned about the lack of consensus among experts in the field as to whether or not a lower ... limit would achieve greater safety," the MPs say.

"It is also cognizant of the finite resources available to enforce the laws on impaired driving."

Lowering the Criminal Code's blood-alcohol content (BAC) limit would create another 75,000 to 100,000 impaired-driving cases on top of the current caseload of more than 50,000 criminal cases annually, the MPs say.

The majority report says law-enforcement and justice resources are best directed at the most dangerous drivers who are already well above the legal limit.

"High-BAC drivers represent about one per cent of the cars on the road at night and on weekends yet they account for nearly half of all drivers killed at those times," says the report.

"The worst offenders are already driving with BACs two or three times the current limit and it would be naive to think they would comply with a lower limit. Drivers with the highest BACs constitute the most significant danger on the roads and they are still the priority."

Almost all provinces have lower blood-alcohol limits and accompanying licence suspensions to get drunk drivers off the road, the report adds.

"It appears to the committee that the potentially negative consequences associated with `net widening' and bringing more impaired drivers into criminal court would likely outweigh any potential traffic safety benefit that may result from a lower Criminal Code BAC limit."

A dissenting report by NDP justice critic Joe Comartin calls on Ottawa to reduce the limit to .05. He says medical science has definitively determined that .05 represents "the threshold at which the ability of a human being to operate a motor vehicle ... becomes sufficiently impaired to present an imminent danger to themself and others."

Among the committee's 10 recommendations:

• It calls on the provinces to standardize the legal drinking age in an attempt to reduce the practice of cross-border drinking and driving.
• It says random roadside breath testing should be put in place, noting that courts have affirmed the police right to conduct random stops and searches under provincial highway traffic laws.
• It urges tougher sanctions for repeat impaired drivers and those with blood alcohol concentrations exceeding 160 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood, or .16.

Committee chair Ed Fast said in a release he hopes the report will lead to a "more robust and co-ordinated approach to the fight against alcohol-impaired driving across Canada and a marked reduction in related injuries and deaths."