I meet with my provincial and territorial counterparts about once a year. We met about a year ago, in January, and we all agreed that we were going to strike a task force to look at how we can improve the safety of school buses. As it is right now, school buses are by far the safest way for children to get to school—much safer than getting in the car with their parents. But there's always room for improvement.
This task force submitted its report, which is available online now, and they did an excellent job of pointing out some things we can do.
The fatality rate from school bus accidents is very low. Most of them, 80%, occur outside the bus. There are measures the task force proposed, four of them specifically for outside the bus, that are aimed at making it safer when the child leaves the bus or is getting ready to get on the bus, particularly if there is oncoming traffic.
We also looked at the question of seat belts. Seat belts are a complicated issue. It sounds like a no-brainer to put a seat belt in a bus, but it's more complicated than that. As a result, we agreed with the provinces and territories to do two pilot projects this coming year to look at the issue in all of its dimensions.