Public Safety committee  No.

Public Safety committee  To use the terms exactly, delirium tremens is a specific medical condition associated with alcohol withdrawal. What we're talking about is excited delirium, which is not acknowledged as a medical condition but is known to law enforcement personnel, paramedics, coroners, and forensic pathologists.

Public Safety committee  Correct.

Public Safety committee  I'm not sure I understand your question. Are there other effects, besides cardiac effects, that could continue after the application of the electrical activity? Is that the question? Because there are.

Public Safety committee  My personal view is that we don't know. The most honest answer is that we do not know that. Is it possible? Yes, it is.

Public Safety committee  The only thing I can add to what Dr. Dowling has said is about the pig experiments, where 40-second applications used in pigs were associated with a higher rate of ventricular fibrillation. The only inference I would draw from that is that prolonged application is going to make it more likely that you'll have a discharge during that vulnerable period of the heart cycle, and the potential would exist then, perhaps more than in the briefer applications, for cardiac rhythm abnormalities.

Public Safety committee  It depends on the heart rate, but it would be fair to say that you could expect that an individual in this state would have a heart rate between 120 to 150 typically, because they're exercising, they're agitated, they have a tremendous outpouring of adrenalin from the internal sources that adrenalin comes from.

Public Safety committee  That would be fair to say; I think you'd have to acknowledge that this is the possibility, but we've not seen it. It's something we've not seen in our province, and it sounds as though Alberta hasn't either.

Public Safety committee  Yes, but I think you need to qualify that concern. If I may, I'll just give you some background. The actual energy that reaches the heart is below the amount of energy that has been shown experimentally to induce ventricular fibrillation, in the main. Again, there's a possibility that if the darts happen to be in a location where the current traverses the heart, the energy would be higher.

Public Safety committee  I don't know the methodology they used, so I can't comment.

Public Safety committee  Yes, I did.

Public Safety committee  Thank you. I appreciate that.

Public Safety committee  I'm not an expert on the application of it in the use of force continuum, so I couldn't really comment. I wouldn't be prepared to talk.

Public Safety committee  I am, and I apologize to the committee that the screen is behind you. Again, like Dr. Dowling, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to address the committee, Mr. Chairman, and advise that Ontario has a medical coroner system very similar in many ways to Alberta's, in that a physician investigates all deaths.