Health committee  [Inaudible—Editor] I'm unaware of a prevention program that has been tremendously successful, and when I hear—

Health committee  There is no magic bullet. I think at the moment some of the programs that provide the best data have, first of all, two levels of prevention: primary prevention for everybody in the schools, for example, and having that there, and then the second level, for people who we identify as being at risk.

Health committee  I have something that I would like to add. Taking the kids out of their culture and sending them somewhere by plane somewhere else is an utter disaster. Unfortunately, I've seen Health Canada do that several times. If there's a crisis, they send kids somewhere else. We've had this experience in Calgary with people from the northern communities coming in.

Health committee  By the way, Mr. Webber, as you know, I was at an international conference in Montreal last week. So was Dr. Chase. I think the wisdom at the moment is that our recommendation for physicians is to go through a phase of decriminalization, which is urgently needed, the next step being legalization.

Health committee  One example of big pharma was the temporary approval thing. When I saw this brought up, I remember actually resigning from the committee that recommended it. It was a joke, all our patients put in boiling water.... That was the end of the temp approve....

Health committee  I just want to mention that there's a crisis right now and I think the short-term solution is the long-term solution. The short terms are not as long, but people are dying every day. Something has to be done about this. Then that gives us an opportunity to think also in the long term.

Health committee  I guess I have some difficulty.... First of all, I want to differentiate the statuses that we're seeing right now from addiction. Not all the kids who are dying today are addicted. Sometimes it's their first, second, or third time. They were looking for something else that turned out to be laced with whatever.

Health committee  I'm going to talk about general population surveys, where sometimes the figures come from the States. At this point in time, looking at the last 20 years, the rates for alcohol are—the answer for you is to go drug by drug—more or less steady, maybe slightly increased, but really steady.

Health committee  Just very briefly, I want to make sure that we don't go to a knee-jerk reaction of suddenly moving on and saying, okay, no more opioids. Unfortunately, I have an impression that part of the fentanyl crisis that has occurred has been because of people getting desperate because suddenly their medication was cut down.

Health committee  Thank you very much for the invitation and the experience. It's my first time to stand in front of one of your committees. First of all, I support all the statements that have been made. I was thinking as I was listening to my colleagues here that there's actually a fair amount of consensus around what we're talking about, as in the issues and so forth, and I'm thinking if there's so much consensus, how come we're still having so much difficulty delivering the services we need?