It has been said a couple times here today already that it’s hard to believe that this actually isn’t a law that’s in existence right now in Ontario. When we take a look at some of the statistics—my friend from Carleton mentioned a number of them—there’s one that stands out to me, and that’s from the Lifesaving Society: 87% of drownings from boating occur because someone wasn’t wearing a life jacket. That 87% is a big number, a big percentage that’s really easy to change.

If you take a look at what has happened with some other safety devices that we use in Ontario—bicycle helmets were not something that, as a kid growing up, people ever wore, and we had a lot of brain injuries from it. One of the things that changed is that now when you go biking, everyone is wearing a helmet and no one complains about wearing a helmet. That’s because we started with kids and we showed kids how wearing a bicycle helmet would make a big difference. Now, as adults, they wear bicycle helmets and think nothing of it.

That 87% of people who drowned in a boating accident, who weren’t wearing their life jackets—if we start with kids and normalize wearing your life jacket, rather than having it tucked up under the front of your runabout, we’ll get to a point where it’s not uncommon, then, for adults to be wearing a life jacket, and that 87% number will drop significantly as a result of it.

This is a bill that we need to pass. This is a bill that will make a big difference in a lot of people’s lives, because I would hazard to guess that anyone who lives near the water knows of a family who has lost a family member because of a preventable drowning accident like that. My hope is that everyone here today will pass this on voice, and we’ll go straight to committee and then turn it into a law at third reading.