Last Thursday, I left Ottawa at 6:30 in the morning on my bicycle, bound for this place. We called it the #SafetyRide. Our goal was to get here in four days, and I’m proud to say we made it, with the support of colleagues and friends along the way. We stopped in Kingston, in Brighton, in Oshawa, in Scarborough, and we ended here on the front lawn of the Legislature. Our goal was to hear from people and families about vulnerable road users and to talk about our private member’s bill we’re working on: Bill 40, the Moving Ontarians Safely Act.

Speaker, as we stopped in community after community, we heard stories that I will never forget. I talked to Anita Armstrong about her daughter Serene, who is now 14 years old and will live the rest of her life with a critical brain injury after being hit, as she crossed the street in Ottawa, by a driver who fled the scene. We met with Jess Spieker and Meredith Wilkinson, two cyclists in this great city of Toronto who have critical, lifelong injuries after being hit in our streets. I talked to Chris, a paramedic, who was responding to an emergency at the side of the road and whose paramedic bus was hit by a driver who was driving recklessly.

Speaker, the unfortunate reality is that the number of pedestrians and cyclists and other vulnerable road users being killed is not going down. Today, statistics bear that 20 vulnerable road users will be brought into emergency room departments after being struck down by a careless driver. We have to change our laws, and I urge members to support Bill 40.