About a year after I was first elected, I remember hearing from a constituent who commented that it seemed to him that the only time he ever heard about issues in politics was when there was public backlash or controversy around an idea. I told him that many pieces of legislation or policy ideas receive general public support and therefore receive all-party support. He wondered why he never heard much about these initiatives.

Not long after, I was repeating this discussion to a friend of mine who works in the Winnipeg media. He laughed and said that in his line of work they had an old saying, they didn’t report when planes landed safely, only when they crashed. The same general principle held true for public policy. If there was public controversy around a piece of legislation or an idea it got attention. If there wasn’t any public outcry or concern, it got very little in the way of sustained attention.

While many of the things that garner wide public and legislative support don’t get much attention, they often can have significant impacts on our lives. One example in Manitoba is around public access to defibrillators.

Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) provide an electronic shock to the heart and can be life savers for those who experience a cardiac arrest. Since 85 per cent of cardiac arrests happen outside of a hospital, it makes sense to have AEDs available in public spaces. AEDs are safe for public access because they are programmed to detect if a person is having an irregular heart rhythm which indicates a potential cardiac arrest. It does not deliver a shock if it doesn’t detect an irregular heart rhythm.

All political parties in Manitoba agreed that AEDs should be made available in more public places. As a result, and with the support of the Heart and Stroke Foundation, 1,000 defibrillators are being provided so that they can be placed in high-traffic public facilities such as gyms, arenas, schools, airports and other areas. The hope is that by ensuring AEDs are available in many public places they will be there to save a life in the case of a cardiac arrest and that the public will become familiar with them and how they are used.

In time, AEDs may become as familiar a sight in places as fire extinguishers. It is also our hope that citizens will understand that AEDs are programmed so as not to harm anyone who is not in need of its assistance. According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Manitoba, a combination of defibrillation and CPR can improve the survival rate of someone experiencing a cardiac arrest by 75 percent over someone receiving CPR alone.

Over the course of the next year you will begin to see AEDs in more public places. It’s something that makes sense and that received wide public and political support and it’s a good initiative worth repeating.