Opinion: Why I brought forward Xavier’s Law |
Dana Lajeunesse is the BC NDP MLA for Juan de Fuca-Malahat
When a family in my community lost their 12-year-old son, Xavier Rasul-Jankovics, to a reckless driver, they called for change that would make our roads safer and prevent other families from suffering the same loss.
Their story is heartbreaking—I immediately started thinking of real ways I could help. I decided to introduce a bill to bring in changes to address incidents like these, which we’ve been referring to as Xavier’s Law. This bill gives police the ability to issue a 30-day driving prohibition for reckless driving and requires that every incident be reported to the Superintendent of Motor Vehicles so that dangerous patterns of behaviour can be identified early and addressed before another tragedy occurs.
Some commentators and members of the opposition have suggested that this bill is unconstitutional or too broad. I take these claims seriously, but they’re not consistent with the facts.
As I’ve mentioned previously to the media, I’m not a lawyer, but I made use of the resources and information available to me to help craft a bill that I’m confident will initiate positive change. In preparing this bill, I looked to other models across Canada to see what was already working in other jurisdictions. This bill follows the Ontario model, more precisely the Moving Ontarians More........