You haven't answered my question.
Evidence of meeting #32 for Health in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was insite.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #32 for Health in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was insite.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Tony Clement Conservative Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON
You never want to hear the answer, but that's okay.
12:50 p.m.
A voice
Maybe you would like to define “peer-reviewed”.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
David Tilson Conservative Dufferin—Caledon, ON
She's even interrupting a point of order, for heaven's sake.
The minister speaks and she literally heckles him. It's most inappropriate. If she has something to say, she's free to say it. She can use her time, but she has no right to heckle a witness. It's most inappropriate. We're honourable members of Parliament and she should act like one.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Robert Thibault Liberal West Nova, NS
Madam Chair, on Mr. Tilson's point of order, when members of a committee have the floor for the allotted time, they can choose how they want that time spent. They can ask questions or make comments.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Robert Thibault Liberal West Nova, NS
They can interrupt a witness if the witness is abusing their time. Usually what happens—and I'll remind you of this—is the witness takes the witness position and gives a 10-minute presentation. When it's a minister, sometimes we let it go for 15.
Today the minister chose to speak for 25 minutes, and he was attempting to repeat his propaganda during the member's time. She objected to that. She stopped that. That's absolutely normal, Madam Chair.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
Mr. Thibault, I am asking that all committee members be respectful of one another. I'm asking that you do not heckle. I'm asking you to allow the minister to answer.
I'm asking you to ask your question. No one will interrupt you. I'm asking you to allow the minister to answer your question.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC
Madam Chair, with due respect to the chair and to the minister, I am not heckling the minister. I asked the minister at the very beginning of my question to give me a simple yes or no. I did not get a yes or no. I got a repeat of what I already have here on paper, what I have listened to and read. I have so many questions I need to ask this minister that I will have to choose.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC
My time is spent in getting efficient questions and efficient answers. That is not heckling, Madam Chair.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC
The minister has to be respectful of what the questioner asks of him.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC
Thank you.
Madam Chair, I have another question of the minister. He has removed harm reduction from the four pillars and now there are three pillars of drug policy nationally.
The question I would like to ask the minister is this. Does he disagree fundamentally with the concept of harm reduction, which is a hallowed public health principle not only in substance abuse but in any public health pillars dealing with public health problems? Harm reduction simply means you reduce the death, mortality, and morbidity in patients while you are getting them to treatment and to where you can help them. You decrease the amount.
Madam Chair, I want to say that as a physician I have had patients who were addicted, who have told me when I tried to help them that they didn't care. All their friends had died before the age of 30. They were going to die, so they didn't really care.
What harm reduction does...and what Insite has done is it has given these people hope that they need not die, hope that they need not get a deadly illness, and that has given them the ability to seek help, to seek detox, and to seek treatment, as you have clearly seen in the results. This is a group who would never have done that before.
The minister has therefore focused on prevention. One of the things we see from Health Canada is that the minister, through Health Canada, has put out a series of advertisements with regard to prevention. Madam Chair, I want to suggest that in fact in the United States that is exactly what is being done. The National Institute on Drug Abuse in the United States has evaluated the national media campaign in the U.S., which is extremely similar to the one in Canada, and it has said it is not effective.
So I would like the minister to tell us why he is embarking on an ineffective course of action. May I have a short answer from the minister, please?
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Tony Clement Conservative Parry Sound—Muskoka, ON
Thank you for your question.
First of all, we haven't removed harm reduction. We believe that harm reduction occurs with enforcement, with prevention, and with treatment, and that is the best way to get harm reduction to people who need it.
In terms of the media campaign, we of course test drove the media campaign and it was found to be highly effective. After 20 years in which the federal government did not advertise about drugs on the airwaves, parents wanted to know how to have the conversation with their kids. They wanted to have some help from the government on how to broach the topic of drugs with their kids, and that's what this media campaign is all about. Certainly it has been test driven, and I think it will be effective.