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House Hansard - 111

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
October 17, 2022 11:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 111 - Oct/17/22
Mr. Scott Reid (Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, CPC)
  • Oct/17/22 5:52:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today's question relates to the number of lives that could be saved if the government would instruct the RCMP to install automated external defibrillators, also known as AEDs, in each cruiser. I have been raising this issue since the Liberal government came to power in 2015, but the government unfortunately has taken no action. By my calculation, about 300 lives would be saved every year if AEDs were installed in Canada's 5,600 RCMP cruisers. Let me tell members how I have come to that calculation. The purpose of an AED is to reduce fatalities from the kind of heart attack known as sudden cardiac arrest, a pathology that typically starts with what is known as pulseless ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation. An academic paper published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine makes the following remarkable assertion regarding this pathology: “Every patient with a witnessed ventricular fibrillation cardiac arrest should survive. If the patient does not survive, the goal is to determine why.” In principle, AEDs, which are the devices used to counter this kind of cardiac issue, should save a lot of lives. How many? Well, ventricular tachycardia and ventricular fibrillation are the source of 85% of all sudden cardiac arrest deaths. Among this population, if each cardiac crisis were witnessed and responded to instantly by a first responder equipped with an AED, there would in principle be a perfect survival rate. In practice, the survival rate is going to be lower, but when the rate is at its highest, in controlled, highly monitored situations such as airports and casinos, it is impressive. At O'Hare airport in Chicago, for example, the save rate is 75%. However, time is of the essence. According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation, for every minute the application of an AED is delayed, the chance of survival drops by about 7% to 10%. After 12 minutes, the survival rate is under 5%. This is why the public policy responsible, both here and in the U.S., is focused so intensely on speeding up response time when a victim or bystander contacts 911. This is why police vehicles are equipped with AEDs in places like Vancouver, Kingston, Laval, Fredericton, Medicine Hat and even Smiths Falls, in my riding. There is an AED in the trunk of every one of the over 150 cruisers of the Ottawa Police Service. As long ago as 2012, this resulted in 22 interventions and nine successful saves of heart attack victims. In 2013, there were 23 interventions and eight lives were saved, and so on, in a long record of success right here in Ottawa. Ottawa's experience, which is typical, shows that on average, one life will be saved every year for every 17 AEDs installed in police cruisers. There is no better place to put an AED than in the trunk of a police car. AEDs that are purchased in bulk cost a little over $1,000 each. Training costs are essentially zero, as RCMP personnel are already trained, and the cost of responding to 911 calls is not a factor, as the police already do this. We can multiply this success rate by the number of cruisers in the RCMP. If each one of the 5,600 RCMP cruisers carried an AED, it would result in 320 lives being saved every year. Since an AED remains operational for 10 years, we could save 3,000 lives over the next decade at a cost of $2,000 per life. With these considerations in mind, why is it that the government has not, after seven years in power, arranged to have AEDs in every RCMP cruiser in the country?
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