Thank you very much.
It is an honour to be here on behalf of the ThinkFirst Foundation of Canada.
Injury affects all of us. It affects the injured person; it affects the person's family; it affects our health care system profoundly. Injury is a huge public health issue in this country. On average in Canada, 500 children a year die from injuries. That's more than one child a day. These are your children, your grandchildren, your nieces, your nephews. We're all affected.
Every 30 seconds in Ontario, somebody walks into an emergency department for treatment resulting from an injury, so it's really important. It affects our wait times, our hospitalizations, everything.
The impact of injury is lifelong. Having a spinal cord injury can result in paraplegia, decreased mobility for the rest of your life. Having a brain injury, as I'm sure Tyler will share with us, can change your life forever.
The leading causes of injury include drowning, motor vehicle and pedestrian injuries, and falls. All of these have evidence-based strategies that can reduce their incidence or their causes in our population. If we just did what we know works, we'd already make a huge impact. Things like bicycle helmet laws, four-sided pool fencing, playground standards that meet the CSA standards developed here in Canada, rule changes in sports, can all lead to healthier and safer kids in Canada. We know that some populations are particularly vulnerable. Poor children are at increased risk. Our first nations and Inuit children are much more likely to die of injury than our other Canadian children. Children who live in rural and remote areas on places such as farms are also at increased risk.
We rank 32nd among OECD countries in injury prevention, and for a country like Canada, that is not good enough. We can and must do better for our children and for our communities in injury prevention.
Rebecca's going to talk a bit about some suggestions for strategies, which I think are similar to what the other speakers have mentioned.