Health committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair, and first of all congratulations on your election to the position of chair. Honourable members of the committee, thank you for inviting the RCMP to participate in these proceedings. I am happy to be here today with my colleague and partners. I am Ins

Health committee  I can add to that, for sure. We have a number of different awareness programs. One of them is the aboriginal shield program, which targets in principle the aboriginal community and certainly the youth starting at school age. We also have the drug abuse resistance program, which

Health committee  My expert here advises me that it's no longer being published. Those types of reports, as you acknowledged, were being published in 2009. Things have changed since then.

Health committee  Right. The statistics in relation to prescription drugs, I believe, would be maintained by Health Canada. We do have statistics on seizures certainly. We would have access to that already.

Health committee  If it's a drug that falls under barbiturates or would fall under one of the schedules that Monsieur Saint-Denis is referring to, it certainly would apply under the CDSA. We would investigate the offences under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. We would likely charge the in

Health committee  I would not have those statistics, I'm sorry.

Health committee  I don't have the statistics in regard to that, and it may be a little bit off the subject we're discussing here today.

Health committee  I think the officers in general—RCMP, municipal, and provincial police force agencies—are receiving adequate training. But I think it's something that has to be continuous, because you can never receive enough training. It's not because the training they receive is not good, it's

Health committee  It's available through different means. For example, we have the drug investigator's course that's delivered at the Canadian Police College. Some of the municipal and provincial police forces also offer their own training. For example, Corporal Luc Chicoine, who is here today as

Health committee  Like I said in my opening remarks, enforcement is everybody's responsibility. Education is everybody's responsibility, so definitely making training available to their officers on a municipal level would certainly be a good start towards prevention.

Health committee  The training is not only for officers. It's also a community response with health professionals in the community, especially when it comes to prescription drugs. Obviously they have a role to play as well. Social workers would have a role to play. Different partners would have a

Health committee  I will turn it over to Corporal Chicoine.

Health committee  We do not really have any statistics on how they obtain the drugs. They use different methods which have already been mentioned. They steal it from their parents' or grandparents' medicine cabinets. In some cases, the drugs are distributed by dealers, which leads us to conduct in

Health committee  The distributors of illegal drugs are not our responsibility, but that of the Canadian courts. The dealers you refer to would certainly be subject to the same charges as those that were already mentioned, that is to say drug trafficking, or possession with intent to distribute.

Health committee  There are no criminal provisions for such cases.