The deputy mayor of LaSalle wants to the town to get an idling bylaw on the books.
Crystal Meloche will introduce a notice of motion at Tuesday night's Council meeting that will call on administration to prepare a report regarding the creation of an idling bylaw. It would also be designed to help educate the public on the environmental harms of idling.
Meloche says many municipalities across Ontario already have an idling bylaw.
She says this is just the next step in the municipality to address climate change.
"You just don't realize you're doing it, sometimes you're just waiting for someone to come to the car or someone ran into the grocery store," says Meloche. "It's just being more cognizant of what we're doing and saying to ourselves, 'oh man, let's shut off that vehicle, there's no need for our vehicle to run right now.'"
She hopes hopes more people will be aware of idling, because we all do it.
"If you go to a school and you sit there, you're waiting to pickup your kids at the end of the school day, people are idling for 15 to 20 minutes in their cars. We're talking about 30 or 40 plus cars doing that in a certain area, which obviously isn't healthy either," she says,
Meloche says the bylaw is also to create awareness, even though it would be tough to enforce.
"By creating this bylaw, if gives our bylaw enforcement officers and police officers another tool to use when they're out on the road. Whether they're out on another call and there's idling cars in the parking lot, it's just a great chance to bring awareness to it. Hopefully, people will start learning to turn off those vehicles," she says.
Meloche also hopes some flexibility is factored into the bylaw to take into account emergency and commercial vehicles that need to run in order to operate.
LaSalle Council meets at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, July 12.
With files from Rob Hindi