Mr. Speaker, in June last year, I pointed out to the House that over 300 lives could be saved every year if defibrillators were installed in all 5,600 RCMP cruisers at a cost of $10 million.
I calculated this as follows. For over a decade, the Ottawa Police Service has had a defibrillator in each cruiser. In each of the past two years, an average of one life has been saved for every 17 installed defibrillators. Multiply that by 5,600 RCMP cruisers, and it adds up to 320 lives saved each and every year.
I am not the only person who understands this. In 2013, the present Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness presented a private member's motion, Motion No. 446, which called for defibrillators to be installed in all RCMP cruisers. He is now the minister in charge of the RCMP. I asked him to follow through on Motion No. 446. If he does so a year from now, that will be better than nothing; but if he does so today, the lives of 320 Canadians who would otherwise be dead a year from now would be saved.