Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak, on behalf of the Official Opposition, to Bill C-220, an Act to amend the Hazardous Products Act.
It is always useful to read the explanatory note: "The purpose of this bill is to make the Hazardous Products Act applicable to soccer goals, handball goals and field hockey goals as restricted products''.
At this stage I would like to commend the hon. member for Kent on his perseverance, since the hon. member introduced this bill during the previous Parliament and had to go through the whole process again when the new Parliament convened. I also want to commend him on his sensitivity, in the light of the tragic experience in his riding of Robert and Maria Weese, who lost their son Mark at the age of six.
Personally, I am very sensitive to such matters because I have a son the same age, and I can imagine the intense grief suffered by these parents after such a tragic event.
The bill would make it compulsory to equip soccer, handball and field hockey goals with an anchoring device that would prevent the goals from tipping over and falling on children playing nearby. I should explain that in most cases, these accidents did not happen during games but when children were playing with the goals on playgrounds and the goals tipped over, or when the goals were tipped over by a gust of wind and fell on a child, causing either serious injury or death.
Finally, it is also the intent of this bill, in accordance with the coroner's recommendation we will look at later on, that nets and goals shall be portable and can be put away after games in order to prevent this kind of accident.
The Mark Weese case is not unique. In fact, it is unfortunate there are so few statistics in Canada on the subject, and it seems neither hospitals nor schools have any obligation to provide information on such cases to any authorities whatsoever. Fortunately, this is not the case in the United States, where the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission monitors this kind of thing. From 1979 to 1992, according to the Commission, many accidents occurred, five causing major injuries, in other words, very serious-you can imagine what that means-and fifteen causing the deaths of individuals, I cannot really say children, ranging in age from three to twenty-two. So that is an indication of the importance of this proposal.
The bill was directly inspired by the coroner's report that was released at the time and to which the hon. member for Kent referred earlier. What struck me particularly was recommendation No. 2, which reads as follows in English:
Portable goals for outdoor use should have an anchoring device to allow for stability during the game and which allows the goal to be stored away.
We therefore support this amendment to the Hazardous Products Act. If the amendment saves only one life, it will have served its purpose.