Lifesaving Society Manitoba is raising awareness this week to make sure people are making smart decisions before they go out in the water.

Water Smart Coordinator Doctor Christopher Love says the long-term average for Manitoba when it comes to drowning deaths is between 21 to 22, but in 2016 and 2017 it’s spiked to 31 and 25 deaths respectively.

Love also touched on how Manitoba has the highest child drowning deaths compared to the rest of Canada noting unfortunately for the past 15 years now we have been statistically speaking the child drowning capital of Canada for children under age five and that hasn’t changed.  He says when you look at the national death rate due to drowning for that age group of zero to four it’s usually 1.0 or 1.1 per 100 thousand population and in Manitoba we have consistently been hitting 3.3,3.4 or 3.5 deaths per hundred thousand population in that age group and being triple the national average is not something for us to be proud of or celebrating.

Love says those cases are preventable with active adult supervision.