Mr. Speaker, by an unhappy coincidence, it was four years ago today that I first urged the House to place automated external defibrillators, or AEDs, into all 5,600 RCMP cruisers. Based on the experience of other Canadian police forces, this would have saved the lives of over 300 heart attack victims a year, at a one-time cost of $5 million, plus maintenance.
Four years have gone by and the RCMP has done nothing but invent excuses for its inaction. Therefore, 1,200 Canadians who would have been alive today are now dead. We could fill this room four times over with the bodies of those who died because we could not find the $5 million.
On the other hand, we parliamentarians have had no trouble finding over 100 times as much, $500 million, to renovate the building in which we meet today, and if estimates are right, we will spend even more on Centre Block. Could we take just 1% of that to save 300 lives next year, the year after and the year after that, or do we just not care?