MADD Canada brings cross-province educational tour to Manitoba schools

Manitoba students took a break from reading, writing and arithmetic on Thursday to learn about the importance of not driving impaired.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Canada teamed up with Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI) to teach its impaired driving prevention program to thousands of students in the province.

The program is offered to Grade 7 to 12 kids through educational videos, aimed at starting a conversation with young people about what is at stake when someone drives impaired.

New this year – schools picked one of three films to screen for students. They’ve recently been revamped to include new educational components meant to allow more hands-on learning.

MPI sponsored the cross-province tour, offering 116 presentations throughout Manitoba.

MADD Canada’s national president says the students appreciate that the program is geared specifically toward them.

“We’re not talking down to them. We’re using language that they’re accustomed to, and speaking in a way that they can identify with, seeing actors their age so they know that this is something that could possibly happen to them,” Tanya Hansen Pratt told CTV News Winnipeg after one of the presentations at Oak Park High School on Thursday.

She has a painful connection to the cause herself.

Her mother Beryl was out walking early one morning in April of 1999 near Portage la Prairie, Man.

She was struck and killed by a 19-year-old driver who had consumed cannabis and alcohol the night before, Hansen Pratt said.

She was left in a water-filled ditch alone.

Over 20 years later, Hansen Pratt hopes her mother’s story will dissuade others from making the choice not to drive impaired.

“It can happen to anyone, any time, so we want to make sure that people understand the message that it’s just not okay to drive impaired, and there’s always another option.”

Dozens of motorists test positive for cannabis during WPS enforcement project

Since her mother’s death, Hansen Pratt says there have been incremental improvements in rates of impaired driving.

However, the legalization of cannabis in Canada has added another dimension to the issue, she says.

To crack down on the problem, MADD Canada and the Winnipeg Police Service launched a targeted enforcement project in mid-January to find motorists operating vehicles under the influence of cannabis and other drugs.

Of 243 traffic stops carried out through the project, officers did 148 drug screening tests. Of those, 64 or 43 per cent of drivers tested positive.

“That’s a really important message that we need people to understand, that driving while impaired on drugs is also impaired driving, and it’s simply not okay,” Hansen Pratt said.