Mr. Speaker, my initial sense of pleasure at standing to speak in support of Bill C-603 has dissipated in light of the parliamentary secretary's comments today and news that the Conservative government will not be supporting the bill. It is an important bill and it certainly deserves the support of all of us in the House.
The bill would make side guards mandatory for heavy trucks manufactured in or imported to Canada, and the NDP has been calling for mandatory side guards for over eight years. This bill was tabled in 2006 and again in 2011 by my former colleague, Olivia Chow, as Bill C-344, and the bill we have before the House today replicates the content of that bill in its entirety.
This bill could save lives and prevent serious accidents and injuries to cyclists. Too many pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists have already lost their lives or sustained serious injuries because of the absence of side guards on heavy trucks. Some of those accidents could have been prevented through earlier implementation of this bill. That is what is most sad about this today.
In 2012, the Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario released a review of all accidental cycling deaths in Ontario from 2006 to 2010, over a five-year period. The report was dedicated to Ontarians who had lost their lives while cycling, and in particular, to the 129 people whose deaths were reviewed by the chief coroner. The report concluded:
In virtually every case, some modifiable action(s) on the part of the cyclist, driver, or both, contributed to the death. Uncontrollable factors, such as weather and road conditions, rarely contributed to the death.
It went on to say:
...our data support the conclusion that all of the 129 deaths in this Review could have been prevented.
One of the recommendations that emerged from that report was directed to Transport Canada. It simply read, “Side-guards should be made mandatory for heavy trucks in Canada.” Side guards will obviously not address all cycling fatalities, but mandatory side guards would address a significant percentage of them. Using Transport Canada figures from 2004 to 2006, the CAA found that approximately 20% of cycling fatalities involved heavy trucks and the Ontario chief coroner found virtually an identical percentage when that office examined fatalities in Ontario between 2006 and 2010, at about 18%.
What was found in the United Kingdom after the implementation of mandatory side guards was that fatalities among cyclists who collided with the sides of these trucks were reduced by 61%. Those are statistics, but they are also lives. Take, for example, the very recent death of Mathilde Blais, a young woman hit and killed by a heavy truck while she was cycling through an underpass in Montreal. One of the three recommendations in the recently released coroner's report urged Transport Canada to make side guards mandatory on heavy trucks. The coroner said that they could have saved Mathilde Blais' life.
This message has been received in jurisdictions around the world and action has been taken. Side guards are already mandatory in the United Kingdom, the European Union and Japan, and have been adopted by several regions and municipalities in Canada. Newfoundland and Labrador has installed side guards on its snow removal and sanding trucks. In Quebec, a number of municipalities and boroughs have also put side guards on snow removal and ice trucks, and the City of Montreal is intending to install them on its entire fleet of heavy vehicles over the next five years.
Change appears to be around the corner in other jurisdictions, too. In April of this year, the United States' National Transportation Safety Board, the equivalent of our Transportation Safety Board of Canada, recommended that, “both newly manufactured truck-tractors and trailers be equipped with side underride protection systems...to better protect passenger vehicle occupants from fatalities and serious injuries.”
They are doing so because, as Ontario's chief coroner's report says:
...it is important to note that deaths resulting from cycling collisions, just like motor vehicle collision deaths and pedestrian deaths, are not “accidents” in the sense that all of these deaths were predictable, and therefore preventable.
Here in Canada, however, the Conservative government remains stubbornly and irresponsibly opposed to their implementation. In fact, just two years ago, Transport Canada put a halt to a study by the National Research Council evaluating whether side skirts attached to trucks would reduce fuel consumption but would also prevent cyclists and other vulnerable road users from injury or death.
We have heard quotes from that study today, but in the conclusions to the first phase of that study, the National Research Council cites data from the European Union and the United Kingdom showing that significant reductions in the number of bicyclist fatalities were an outcome of side guards introduced onto heavy trucks. That is similar in both the EU and the U.K. Granted, the research council's conclusions were inconclusive. It said that it was not clear that people's lives would be saved if there were side guards, as they could have died in other ways. There was certainly enough positive information and research in that report to warrant proceeding with the second phase, but the Conservative government saw fit to stop that.
Mandatory side guards on heavy trucks are, of course, by no means the only way to prevent cycling injuries and fatalities. There are a number of things we ought to be doing to improve cycling safety and encourage this mode of active transit. With two-thirds of Canadians considered inactive, and a quarter considered obese, cycling is a great, healthy antidote. With estimates of lost productivity due to traffic congestion at around $6 billion and rising in my city of Toronto alone, cycling makes sense for the economy. With anywhere between 40% and 60% of urban greenhouse gas emissions coming from transportation, it makes sense to encourage people to get around by bike.
Let me share a quote:
Imagine if we could invent something that cut road and rail crowding, cut noise, cut pollution and ill-health – something that improved life for everyone, quite quickly, without the cost and disruption of new roads and railways. Well, we invented it 200 years ago: the bicycle.
That is how the mayor of London, England, begins the foreword to the document entitled The Mayor's Vision for Cycling in London. London is a city with its own cycling commissioner, with significant cycling infrastructure, and with plans for more.
Copenhagen is another city that stands out. It set for itself a goal of becoming the world's best bicycle city. It says that investment in cycling is part of its goal of having “a good city life and making Copenhagen CO2 neutral by 2025.” For Copenhagen, and I quote from its cycling strategy, entitled Good, Better, Best:
...cycling is not a goal in itself but rather a highly-prioritised political tool for creating a more liveable city.
Moreover, and important to this debate, studies in Denmark have shown that providing segregated bicycle tracks or lanes alongside urban roads reduce deaths among cyclists by 35%. This is why I am so pleased to second not just this bill but also Motion No. 527, tabled in the House by my colleague from Parkdale—High Park. It is a motion that calls for a national cycling infrastructure strategy. If ever implemented, it would make our cities more liveable places and, important to this debate today, safer places.
Anyone with access to the Internet can find on there a memorial map for fallen Toronto cyclists. That map shows 31 fatalities across my city since this bill calling for mandatory side guards was tabled in 2006.
The bill is one part, but a necessary part, in ensuring that we do what we ought to be doing in this House, which is protecting the lives of Canadians. Let me give the last word to the wife and daughter of Ulrich Hartmann, who lost his life in Toronto under the wheels of a cement truck in the year that this bill was first tabled.
Said his wife, Karen:
The Canadian government has a responsibility to ensure the safety of its citizens. Side guards are a no-brainer, like seatbelts and airbags.
Ulrich's daughter, who was just nine at the time of her dad's death, said this:
If side guards had been mandatory I might still have my dad. But we as a country still have an opportunity to save other people's lives. We can prevent that life-altering phone call for other families.
