Sure, go on.

Interjection: You have one minute.

Bill 141, the Defibrillator Registration and Public Access Act, received royal assent in June of 2020, and it will be four years this June, if nothing happens, that we’ve gone without this registry, which does two things: It lets people know where defibrillators are if there’s an emergency. It helps paramedic services know that. So you can imagine right now that if there’s somebody who has a cardiac arrest—and 7,000 people a year have a cardiac arrest in Ontario—if they have that somewhere in Ontario—and you can imagine if it was a relative of yours and they had a cardiac arrest and there was a defibrillator in the elementary school or in an office nearby, but nobody knew.

The other piece of the bill was—and the member from Nickel Belt and myself wrote the same bill as the member from Eglinton–Lawrence; we just travelled that bill, and I’ll explain how that happened in a little while. Inside that bill, it says if you have a defibrillator and it’s registered, then you have to maintain it. It’s not that much to maintain. It’s multiples of years to replace pads and batteries so that it works in case of a cardiac arrest, because if you find a defibrillator and you go to apply it and it doesn’t work, there’s going to be a bad result. So it’s a great bill; they were all great bills.

What happened is, the House leader at the time was a new House leader, and I spoke directly to the House leader and suggested that we debate the member from Eglinton–Lawrence’s bill, because they were all the same, and she had a slot. We could debate it, get it to second reading, and I said, “Let’s travel the bill,” and the House leader, to his credit at the time, said, “Yes, we’ll travel it. We’ll get it done.” It was travelled, and as I said, it passed third reading and received royal assent in June of 2020.

So it’s three and a half years since we debated second reading here—four years actually, so three and a half years this law has been on the books, a law that will save lives. Defibrillators do save lives, and we know that if we get to people within three minutes, they’re likely going to survive.

As I said in my question, the person sitting next to me in this chair is living proof that defibrillators work, and if they couldn’t find it or it didn’t work, he wouldn’t be here. That’s the purpose of the bill.

The reason that I’m annoyed at the answer that I got to the question is, two years ago this member talked about this bill and said we need to do something, two years ago this January, and nothing has happened, no regulations, nothing.

The government has an opportunity to enact a piece of legislation that will keep people safe, that will keep people alive, that will prevent families from having empty chairs. So what I would like to hear from the parliamentary assistant—and I very much appreciate the fact that you’re here—is that somebody is going to do something, that you’re going to get it done because it’s been three and a half years. As I said in my question, three minutes saves a life, but it’s three and a half years we’re waiting. Three minutes, three and a half years—and 7,000 people a year.

I really sincerely hope that the government is working on getting this thing done before we come back here. It can be done. It’s been three and a half years. It will almost be four if you don’t get it done. It’s a good thing; it’s an opportunity. We put forward this bill, and it’s been put forward in the past, and it didn’t get done. If I hear in the response from the other side, “Well, you guys never did it,” fine, okay, sure, but you’ve had an opportunity for three and a half years with a law that’s been on the books and an opportunity to do it, and irrespective of what happened 10 years ago or five years ago, you need to do it. It would be good for all Ontarians if this law became enacted as soon as possible.