Bill C-603 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Motor Vehicle Safety Act (vehicle side guards)

This enactment amends the Motor Vehicle Safety Act to prohibit the manufacture or importation of vehicles in higher weight categories that are not equipped with side guards.

Motor Vehicle Safety Act

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this private member's bill, Bill C-603, an act to amend the Motor Vehicle Safety Act with regard to vehicle side guards.

The government considers the safety of Canadian road users to be of paramount importance. However, based on Transport Canada's extensive research on this file, the government cannot support this bill.

Transport Canada has committed to the safety of the Canadian public. Regulatory improvements made under the authority of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act are a key reason that progressively fewer people are killed or injured on the roads each year, despite the ever-increasing number of motor vehicles being used. We are encouraged by the information we derive from our national crash data, which shows steady and impressive progress toward a vision of Canada having the safest roads in the world.

To reduce the risk of death and injury, our government, under the authority of the federal Motor Vehicle Safety Act, has the authority to regulate safety requirements, including side guards, for new trucks and trailers manufactured in Canada and for new and used trucks and trailers imported into Canada. I assure everyone that in the case of side guards, Transport Canada has not been sitting idle. Rather, it has been actively looking for solutions in a broader attempt to improve safety for cyclists and pedestrians on our roads.

Transport Canada has reviewed a number of world studies, but these studies have not provided proof of the safety benefits of side guards and any mechanism of injury prevention. The safety justification behind the European regulation that came into force in the late 1980s is not available for assessment to see whether it would apply equally to Canada.

The National Research Council of Canada, or NRC, completed a study that analyzed the issue of side guards on heavy vehicles. The study investigated current heavy vehicle side guard use worldwide, reviewed their effectiveness, and assessed the feasibility of their mandatory installation in Canada. The NRC study concluded that while the European study showed a reduction in fatalities after side guards were made mandatory, the studies could not connect the reduction in fatalities directly to the use of side guards.

Multi-year trends in road user casualties are usually influenced by several variables. These include improved vehicle, road, and infrastructure design; a reduction in impaired driving; improved law enforcement; and increased use of dedicated pedestrian and cyclist paths. Therefore, it is not possible to definitively conclude that any reduction in European fatalities was due to a single factor, such as side guards.

As I have noted previously, road fatalities have declined steadily over the past decades in Canada as well. This is also the case in Europe. It is not a valid conclusion to attribute such trends to a single factor.

The NRC report also raised important issues regarding the extent to which the European experience would be applicable to Canada. One point that merits consideration is that the number of cyclist fatalities per year as a percentage of overall road fatalities is 4.7% in Europe, which is more than double the 2% rate seen here in Canada. Other significant differences between Canada and Europe, including road infrastructure, user behaviour, and road user type composition, make it impossible to make a valid statistical comparison between the two regions.

Transport Canada has also assessed national collision statistics and investigated a number of collisions between cyclists and pedestrians and heavy trucks and trailers dating back to 2003. Transport Canada's National Collision Database indicates that relatively few cyclist and pedestrian collisions in Canada involve heavy trucks. Cyclist and pedestrian injuries occur 98% of the time in collisions involving small vehicles—that is, cars, SUVs, et cetera—rather than heavy trucks. Moreover, more than 80% of fatalities involving cyclists and heavy trucks occur in collisions with the front of the vehicle, where side guards would have absolutely no effect.

Based on an analysis of fatal collisions in Canada, there were an average of two cyclist and approximately four pedestrian fatalities per year that occurred in collisions involving the sides of large trucks and trailers. While any such loss of life is tragic, this represents fewer than 4% of the total number of cyclist fatalities and less than 1% of the total number of pedestrian fatalities involving motor vehicle collisions over that time period.

Some serious collisions involving pedestrians and cyclists with buses demonstrate that side guards may not be a reliable solution. Due to their design, bus bodies sit much lower to the ground than would side guards attached to heavy trucks and trailers. Despite this design characteristic of buses, there are still cyclist and pedestrian fatalities and injuries in collisions involving the sides of buses in Canada, including city buses.

Due to vehicle design and the variety of commercial applications, side guards could not be installed on all vehicles. Vehicle statistics in the United Kingdom estimate that 20% of heavy vehicles are exempt from side guards due to their design or operation, such as dump trucks, garbage trucks, and vehicles that require access along the side for their operation.

Any federal side guard regulation would have no effect on the hundreds of thousands of existing trucks on our roadways, as these do not fall under federal jurisdiction. However, individual provincial and territorial governments are able to require side guards on their existing locally registered fleets. We note that no provinces or territories have done so at the present time.

In addition, upwards of 25% of the trucks on Canadian roads are registered in the United States and are not subject to regulations under the Canadian Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Indeed, American federal regulations do not require that trucks be equipped with side guards.

Municipalities also have the responsibility to ensure their infrastructure accommodates for the safe transportation of all road users. For example, it is up to municipalities where to design for bike lanes and wider streets where there is a demonstrated need.

We ensure that any regulatory action we take is effective and achieves its intended objectives. We simply do not have the evidence that any side guard regulation in Canada would be effective. However, there are alternative ways of improving safety by preventing collisions.

Collision investigations have shown that a significant factor in pedestrian and cyclist fatalities involving heavy trucks has been poor driver visibility. There are blind spots around these heavy vehicles, and due to this, truck drivers sometimes simply do not see these cyclists and pedestrians.

There are alternative technologies with the potential to improve driver visibility, which are currently being researched in North America and abroad. Mirrorless commercial vehicle systems are under development, which are designed to provide the driver with improved indirect visibility by using side view cameras and proximity sensors.

It is anticipated that these systems could provide benefits in a broader range of collision types, including collisions where the large truck is turning and where side guards have shown no measurable benefit. Transport Canada is committed to studying these promising new technologies in the interest of improving road safety in Canada.

While side guards do not show the benefits that some would expect, the alternative technologies that Transport Canada is looking into have the potential to improve safety around heavy trucks not only for cyclists and pedestrians but also for motorists.

New technology could provide greater benefits than side guard regulation could achieve. Transport Canada continues to study these promising technologies for potential future regulation. We will continue our strong record of taking action to save lives and prevent injuries.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Davenport. I will advise the member that he will not have his full ten minutes; he will have about seven to eight minutes.

[Andrew Cash, NDP, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, those who are listening to this debate may be surprised to see the government doubting the research, the evidence, and the very credible voices speaking out in favour of side guards. It is just as it was when the members of the current government denied the existence of climate change for many years, and have only recently awakened to that fact. This is a government that does not like evidence and hard facts. The way the Conservatives have spun their opposition to this balanced and reasoned private member's bill by my friend, the member of Parliament for Brossard—La Prairie, is to say that there is emerging technology that might be better. Therefore, they will not save lives now but rather wait for research to happen with respect to emerging technologies and groovy new mirrorless transportation systems.

It is the role of those of us in this place as parliamentarians to protect the lives of Canadians. When we come across a simple solution that would save some lives, the government refers it to the municipalities. It beats up the municipalities and hectors the provinces instead of standing up and taking responsibility for the areas it has responsibility for. That is one of the reasons this bill is so important and the government's opposition to it is so incredibly galling.

I am a little emotional about this because Jenna Morrison was killed in November of 2011 when she was pulled under a heavy truck on the border between my riding and the riding of Parkdale—High Park. She was killed at a turn that I often make on my bicycle. Jenna Morrison was the exact same age as my own wife, who just had a child a month ago. As we all know, Jenna Morrison was also with child at the time she was killed. For me it is also a very real reminder that we have cyclists and heavy trucks sharing the road.

It is true that we need better, stronger and more comprehensive transportation throughways for cyclists. I will remind those listening that many members of the government are quite friendly with the former mayor of Toronto who spent $300,000 in taxpayer dollars to paint over a bicycle lane after he announced that the war on the car was over. Apparently there was a war but no one knew it. What I am getting at here is that the government cannot help but play politics with even the most simple solutions to some very important problems.

When I think about Jenna Morrison's young son and her partner whom she left behind and the way in which their lives have been turned upside down, and others' lives too right across the country, I think it is incumbent on us to take the matter seriously and not to try to dodge the issue. We know that side guards are mandatory on many heavy trucks in the United Kingdom. Japan and the European Union are other examples. It is not as though this was an idea that came out of the ether. This is something that we know works. Instead, the government is saying that we should find some other technology. Maybe we need to check the logs of the lobby registry to see how often the trucking industry has lobbied the government to oppose this bill. In cities like Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, St. John's, and Halifax, in fact in cities right across the country, we have built roads for cars but we have more and more cyclists on the roads.

We absolutely need to deal with that change in road use. We have had a colossal battle over the last several years in Toronto to start to deal with it. They are complex issues and they are going to take a significant amount of political will.

However, I want to ask the members opposite how much political will we need to require mandatory side guards. It amazes me that we could not have all party support for the bill. I listened very carefully to the members opposite who said there were only a couple of deaths in the country, so it is not that big a deal. I think most members here would agree that if we in this place can save even one life by implementing safeguards and standards that are not going to cost the treasury a dime, it is incumbent upon us to take the issue seriously and pass this piece of legislation.

I would like to congratulate my hon. friend for tabling a bill that was initially put forward by our good friend Olivia Chow. I am honoured to stand here on behalf of the good people in the riding of Davenport, in the great city of Toronto, to support the bill.

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased and yet somewhat disappointed to be speaking today.

I am pleased because this is a private member's bill. When it was my turn to decide which bill I would introduce, I asked myself what change we could actually make. Clearly, we are talking about a bill that can save lives.

I listened closely to all of the speeches. I would like to thank my colleagues on this side of the House, both the Liberals and the NDP. They gave speeches that really touched me, that got to the heart of the matter and that expressed much of what I was feeling.

I am disappointed today because I also listened to the Conservative government during the first hour of debate. From the outset, the government opposed the bill. I found it unfortunate and difficult to witness such an ideological attitude. However, this is not just about ideology. The members are being whipped by their government and cabinet, which are telling them to vote a certain way and spout the same lines. Everything I heard from the other side was the same.

If the members truly believe that they are lacking information, they should support the bill at second reading and we will study it in committee. We will look at the facts.

According to them, the studies are inconclusive. I plead with my colleagues opposite to actually read some of the reports.

There is one report that came from the chief coroner of Ontario. It is dated June 2012, so it is a new report that came out not too long ago. It looked at what happened between January 2006 and December 31, 2010. It looked at the fatalities. It looked at the accidents involving trucks and cyclists. The recommendation that came from the coroner is outlined in number 13. It is a recommendation to Transport Canada that states, “Side-guards should be made mandatory for heavy trucks in Canada.”

Therefore, if my colleagues do not want to listen to us in the opposition and are saying the studies are not conclusive, they should at least look at the reports that came from the coroner. If they believe that what we have here is not sufficient, let us study it at committee. Let us look at what we have in terms of reports and studies and let us make a decision.

I urge my colleagues to vote in favour of the bill at second reading. Then, if they are not satisfied with what we do at committee, that is fine.

In Europe, vehicle side guards have been mandatory for the past 25 years. They are mandatory in Japan and Great Britain. In Canada, there have been so many deaths that I cannot name all the victims. One death in particular had a real impact on me because I met the victim's mother. Jessica was killed by a vehicle. She wanted to save her brother and she fell under the vehicle.

Westmount, the City of Montreal and Ville Saint-Laurent reacted by equipping their vehicles with side guards. If anyone thinks that the municipalities are wasting their money, they can think again. The government is saying that the municipalities and the provinces can make other regulations themselves. That is true, but we also have a responsibility. We must show leadership.

All my colleagues were going to vote against the bill at second reading. We should ask ourselves next time when there is a death. It happened two weeks ago. There was a death in Montreal, and the first thing that was said was that maybe sideguards would have saved the person.

When Mathilde Blais was killed earlier this year, we said that maybe side guards would have saved her. What did the coroner report say? It said they could have saved her. Please think about it next time.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Order, please. It being 6:17 p.m., the time provided for debate has expired.

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Pursuant to an order made on Tuesday, November 25, 2014, the division stands deferred until Wednesday, December 10, 2014, at the expiry of the time provided for oral questions.