Mr. Speaker, I hope I will remember the second part of the question after I get through the first part. With regard to the educative parts of what is happening in the community, I see young people whose friends either have been significantly physically injured or have died in street racing. They are not racers themselves. They are young people who are concerned enough about it to be holding community forums on it.
Several high schools have held community forums on street racing and what should happen. These young people are teenagers, so their views are quite black and white. They are on this side or that side. They are not very blended, but they have very strong opinions about this.
The kind of debate that engenders is a really important factor in their high schools, because young people have a chance to stand up, give their opinions, think about it and hear from other youth who are not street racing but who are concerned about what it is doing to their friends or the families of their friends.
I watched the televised funeral of a young man who had been killed in a street race. There must have been at least 150 to 200 people there, for what is a very small high school. It mattered very much to those youths that something tragic had happened. That is in part what motivated them to have high school debates.
I have no idea what the police requirements are, I have to say. I would suggest there are times when they may need to go faster, and we know that, although we have also seen a lot of debate about when police chases should be cut off, based on the speed the police cars are going. There is a safety factor at which they will call off the chase because the speed is so dangerous to other people who may be near them. I do not know what the specific needs or technical requirements are. I am not for a minute suggesting that they should not have the resources to do their job.
However, I do think that the whole issue of speeding and the fact that we have paid a lot of attention recently to stopping police chases because there have been significant injuries is enough to say that there is a broad concern out there about speed in a variety of ways, not only the street racing part but speeding for various reasons. The police have been very good about recognizing when it is time to call off a police chase and when they can continue on with safety for the people around them and for the public.
In the community I come from, our crime prevention society has worked very closely around this issue with the RCMP. I do not know about other communities. The crime prevention society in the communities in which I live, Surrey North or Surrey, does a lot of work with youth. The connection with youth is probably as great if not greater than it has been with adults. They have been involved in painting murals on walls to show things to the public, funded through the crime prevention society. There is a superb relationship with youth. There is a superb youth outreach person. I think the crime prevention societies across the country probably have a number of educative strategies.
It would be wonderful if there were a database. I do not know if there is or not. I never like to reinvent a wheel that somebody has already worked on. There could be a database of excellence that we could look at to see that Cranbrook takes its students into the hospitals or that somebody else does something that would work in our community but we have not even thought about trying. All of those pieces are going to have to come together in order to really have an impact on street racing.
Also, now that the question has been asked, I will have to find out what a police car needs as its top speed, because I do not know. Someone on that side probably knows.
Let me say again that it would be superb to actually have a database so one could see what is happening across the country and what might work in one's community, because all communities are different. There is no cookie cutter that says this strategy will work--