Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I support the intent of the motion. I don't want to start a trend, but I have an amendment to propose as well. It's a very minor amendment, I believe, but one that addresses a couple of small concerns I have.
I simply want to state, first off, that I support the intent of the motion. We have witnessed, as Mr. Del Mastro and others have mentioned, a number of hits recently that really show a lack of respect for fellow hockey players on the ice. It's in particular in hockey; I know it's not the only sport in which we see some of these issues.
Going back to my days as a young guy playing hockey, I can recall seeing teammates suffer from what clearly now we would know to be a concussion, but back in those days, it was, “He had his bell rung.” The trainer would ask, “How many fingers am I holding up?” He'd say, “Uhh, two?” “Okay, then get back out on the ice.”
Now you would clearly not see that kind of thing happening. That's obviously a good thing. It's a good idea that we're looking at studying this.
But I wonder about a couple of words in this motion, and only because I think we're prejudging the facts before we study something. That is, we talk, in the middle of this, about “addressing the rising incidence rates of traumatic” etc. I would like to see the words “rising” and “rates” removed so that it just reads, “in addressing the incidence of traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries”. It's only because I wonder whether we're prejudging what we would find in a study. I really struggle with making a prejudgment on what we would find. I support the intent, but this is my concern.
I would propose the amendment that we remove the words “rising” and “rates” that are book-ending the word “incidence”.