A boy remains in critical condition and 13 children are nursing injuries after a bus carrying Grade 4 students from a Mississauga Catholic school crashed Wednesday morning in Brampton.

A school bus veered into a grassy median off the highway in Brampton after a collision with a tractor-trailer.
(Steven D'Souza/CBC)

Emergency crews arrived on scene at Highway 410 south of Clark Boulevard around 9:30 a.m. ET and found the eight-year-old one boy with no vital signs.

He was resuscitated and transported to hospital, where he was fighting for his life on Wednesday afternoon, said Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Cam Woolley.

"We've got 27 children. They're crying. They're hurt," said Woolley, describing the crash involving students from Mississauga's St. Alfred School, part of the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.

"It's a rough scene when you have children involved, especially that many, and the little boy with vital signs absent with paramedics frantically trying to save his life."

Police located the boy's parents and rushed them to hospital to be at his bedside, said Woolley.

Another child, a 10-year-old girl, was in serious condition at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children but her injuries weren't life-threatening, police and health officials said. Unconfirmed reports suggested she had a broken femur.

The provincial police said at least 12 other children were treated for minor injuries, described as bumps and bruises.

Collision caused bus to swerve into ditch

The students were on their way to a field trip at an outdoor recreation centre.

The bus crashed after it collided with a tractor-trailer carrying wooden roof trusses in a "minor sideswipe," Woolley said. Both vehicles were travelling northbound on the highway.

"As a result of that, the bus veered into the muddy grass median that separates the north and southbound lanes," he said. "It's pretty rough terrain and the bus bounced around quite a bit."

Roland Ruzsinszki, a 10-year-old student who was on the bus, described a harrowing experience.

"There were people on top of each other and someone even flew and hit the floor. I was screaming a lot and crying because there was someone right on top of me," said Ruzsinszki, who hurt his back on a seat.

"When we were heading into the ditch I couldn't even breathe," he said. "That's how scared I was."

Ottawa responsible for seatbelt decision, minister says

The crash raised questions across the province about whether seatbelts should be made mandatory in school buses.

Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield has said in the past that the government would look into whether to change the no-seatbelts policy, but said Wednesday that seat belts will not be made mandatory and deferred responsibility on the issue to her federal counterparts.

"We do not set the vehicle specification. National standards are set by Transport Canada for the industry," said Cansfield.

Ontario school buses transport about 800,000 children daily and have a good safety record, said Cansfield.

While seatbelts are not advised for school buses in general because of the varying size, height and weight of students, Progressive Conservative MPP Frank Klees, a former transportation minister, noted that is not the case for buses carrying younger children.

"There is a fairly broad consensus that there should be seatbelts, in fact there was a coroner's recommendation [they be used] … for children under 73 pounds," said Klees.

Klees said two coroner's inquests have recommended the use of seatbelts for buses carrying smaller children.