A non-partisan issue

So it turns out that much of the conventional wisdom that soft high-backed seats in school buses offer children more protection than seatbelts is wrong.

That belief was supported by a1984 Transport Canada study that was shown to be faulty in a recent investigation by the CBC’s The Fifth Estate. Worse still, that investigation also found federal officials have known, since at least 2010, that seatbelts would save lives and prevent injuries on school buses.

Parents, school boards and policy makers should have been given that information. Unaccountably though, Transport Canada kept it under wraps.

That news led former Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne, who didn’t have that information when her party was in power, to draft a private member’s bill calling for three-point seatbelts to be mandatory in new school buses starting by 2020. It would require retrofits for existing buses by 2025.

“I believe Ontario can lead the way,” Wynne says. “We’ve got 800,000-plus kids who ride school buses every day.”

While private member’s bills rarely become law, one that boosts safety, and children’s safety at that, might normally be expected to receive all-party support. Indeed, the head of the Ontario Safety League, Brian Patterson, has said “safety is a non-partisan issue” and even government members see seatbelts in school buses as a necessary step.

If so — and that leads them to support Wynne’s bill — it would be a nice change for the Ford government. So far it has been so hyperpartisan that if Wynne says something is white, Premier Doug Ford is liable to argue it’s black.

This bill, on a reasonable and necessary change to improve the safety of children, may prove to be a test of whether anything can be considered non-partisan by the Ford government.