Saugeen Shores council has approved supporting the Municipality of North Perth in endorsing installing stop arm cameras on all school buses.
During a meeting on April 24, council received a report from its Committee of Whole. It recommended endorsing this motion, and the resolution be set to Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Attorney General Doug Downey, Minister of Education Stephen Lecce, MPP for Huron-Bruce Lisa Thompson, and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO).
This endorsement comes following North Perth council’s passed resolution at its meeting on March 6.
North Perth’s motion says almost 824,000 students travel in about 16,000 school vehicles every school day in the province, and according to data from the Ministry of Transportation, vehicles blow by stopped school buses over 30,000 times every day.
It adds as the province passed the Safer School Zones Act in 2017, which authorized the use of automated school bus stop arm cameras to detect incidents where vehicles fail to stop for school buses when the stop arm is extended, the AMO made a submission in 2019 to support school bus stop arm infraction penalties.
The motion says, however, the costs associated with establishing the needed penalty program are substantial and potentially out of reach for small or rural municipalities.
As a result, the motion proposes the provincial government require all school buses install these cameras and will pay for them for the start of the 2023-2024 school year.
This follows a motion made earlier this month by South Bruce Peninsula Coun. Caleb Hull, who says he duplicated North Perth’s resolution and wanted to urge the provincial government to require all school buses to have stop arm cameras installed.