WATCH: A committee is investigating why it took more than a decade for GM to address a defect linked to 13 deaths, including one Canadian. Eric Sorensen has the details.
TORONTO – Global News has confirmed that Quebec resident Dany Dubuc-Marquis is the sole Canadian among 12 other victims identified by General Motors Inc. as linked to the company’s ignition switch recall of 2.6 million cars.
Twenty-three-year-old Dubuc-Marquis, of Granby, Que. was killed on Highway 139 near Roxton Pond in the early morning hours of June 22, 2013, when he lost control of his 2007 Chevrolet Cobalt.
Dubuc-Marquis’ father, Normand Dubuc, told Global News he won’t stop fighting for his son, and fears there may be other victims in Canada.
In the U.S., Laura Christian – birth mother of Amber Marie Rose, who was killed in a 2005 Maryland wreck in which a Cobalt air bag didn’t inflate – claims to have found crashes that claimed 29 lives through media reports and Facebook page contacts. This is more than double GM’s current estimated death toll.
Transport Canada said in an email that in the June 2013 collision, the air bags didn’t deploy when the car went off the road and hit multiple trees in the crash, and said the “sole occupant” was not wearing a seatbelt.
Get daily National news
The department said data showed the key in the car moved out of the normal “run” position and into the “accessory” position after leaving the road, and suggested in an email this means there may be “various contributing causes” for the crash.
“The investigation is now looking at how the key moving out of the ‘run’ position during the event influenced the operation of the air bags,” said the statement.
Transport Canada said Tuesday it’s in communication with GM Canada regarding its future plans to “ensure that the identified defect in these vehicles is going to be remedied as quickly as possible.”
The department is working with GM Canada to understand the crash “using all available physical evidence as well as data extracted from the vehicle’s event data recorder.”
With files from Global News producer Kam Razavi and reporter Mike Armstrong
Comments