Mr. Speaker, it is always a great honour to rise in the House of Commons to offer thoughts on motions and bills in front of us. Particularly today, it is a great honour to rise in support of Motion No. 148, and our move, I hope unanimously, in this House to establish a national impaired driving prevention week.
I will begin by thanking the hon. member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel for his passion, wisdom, and hard work in bringing forward this motion for our consideration. I believe it is something that can and will change lives once it is enacted.
It is interesting for me that politics is a place where ideas and people come together. This place is a place where our private lives and our public offerings are able to come together. The hon. member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel has brought his private experience, his personal story into the public forum, and I think every one of us is richer for that. There will be Canadians whose lives are saved because of his work today. We thank him and commend him.
The speeches I have listened to on this have been interesting. We have had statistics raised regarding the incidents of impaired driving, collisions, and motor vehicle accidents that are a direct result of impaired driving, and lives lost. We have also heard personal stories of lives that have been broken, dreams that have been shattered, and families that have been severed because of this.
What I want to add to this conversation today is the role of civil society. Our job is to get the laws right. It is also our job to ensure that enforcement happens appropriately. If we have laws that are right, and we have enforcement that happens well, lives can be saved. However, attitude, education, personal responsibility, and our own behaviour are critical in ensuring that lives can be saved.
By establishing a national impaired driving prevention week, we have the opportunity to have a national conversation that engages young people and older people, that is involved in schools and communities, that is able to take the conversation forward, get attitudes to change, to make sure that behaviours are appropriate, and that all of us are working together to ensure that lives can be saved.
This sort of a week would build upon weeks that already exist, but would come at a time of year which is critical. At the end of winter and in the early spring, as students begin to think about the summer, it is a most important time to bring those educational offerings into consideration, making sure that everyone is informed and is enabled to live life appropriately.
I want to highlight one civil society group that is working in concert with many others. It is one that I happen to know quite well. The organization is named Arrive Alive Drive Sober. Arrive Alive has been established for several decades. Its national office is in Don Valley West. They run programs aimed both at young people and older people, to ensure that we will have fewer accidents and many fewer casualties from impaired driving.
Anne Leonard was the executive director for decades, and gave her heart and soul to ensure that their educational programs could find a way to do it. I want to pay tribute to Anne, who retired last year after giving her life to this cause. She worked with so many people to ensure that Canadians have better information and make better decisions. Michael Stewart has taken over from her as executive director and program director. He has brought the wisdom that Anne has offered to the association, and is now living it out.
I work with them every year as they get funding for Canada summer jobs, and employ young people, making sure that information is taken into communities, taken around the province, and making sure that we have activities that promote healthy living, safe driving, and that we have a reduction in impaired driving from any source.
Their public campaigns are centred on two major themes: choose our ride, and shut out impaired driving. They bring together people. They do it in the community at annual conferences, workshops, and other events where people are gathered. They make sure that people hear the right information. They have clever ways of doing that through social media as well as through one-on-one conversations.
I believe that this week, this very important week what will happen in the third week of March, will be an opportunity for Arrive Alive to engage even more strongly in the kinds of activities that the member has envisioned in this motion.
We have rare opportunities in this House to save lives. We bring our personal stories. We commend each other on the activities we are doing. However, this particular motion has the opportunity to change lives and that gives us a great opportunity to engage in that.
I thank the hon. member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel for doing this work, and for his passion, courage, wisdom, and tenacity in doing that. I encourage all members of the House to support the motion when it comes to a vote.