Public Safety committee  Some of those are laid out in the criteria, and we're quite clear on the ones that are needed there. Indeed, with regard to that 90-day public consultation period, a broad range of stakeholders, particularly those working and living in those communities, would be consulted.

Public Safety committee  I think we spoke about this earlier. The scientific evidence that we're looking for here is a medical benefit, and again, a reduction in the risk of disease or death. This would be one example.

Public Safety committee  I think a colleague mentioned that a tremendous amount of international data is available around safe consumption sites. A significant amount of data is available on InSite. That's the type of medical information that would be acceptable under this.

Public Safety committee  Again, I think your honourable colleague noted earlier that there is information available in their communities through various information mechanisms. There is information on publicly discarded drug-related litter. You'll note that this says, “information, if any, on the presence of inappropriately discarded drug-related litter...”.

Public Safety committee  As we've already noted, there are three levels of consultation. One is the letters of opinion that would be required from the PT ministers responsible for health and public safety, local government, local public health officials in the province, and the head of the local police force.

Public Safety committee  The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health received over $930,000 from 2010 to 2014 for the national youth screening project. This has led to piloting of standard screening and assessment tools in 10 communities across Canada, which quickly and reliably identify youth who may have one or more mental health or addiction problems.

Public Safety committee  As Hilary mentioned earlier, the national anti-drug strategy is really built on three pillars. Those pillars are all designed to reduce or eliminate the negative impacts of illicit drug use and contribute to healthier and safer communities. The health portfolio invests approximately $126 million a year to address addictions and illicit drug use in Canada.

Health committee  I'm not sure that we have market research on that particular question. I will note though that under the Canadian tobacco use monitoring survey we have asked a series of questions around e-cigarettes and Canadian use and perceptions on it.

Health committee  I'm not sure that we have a response to that. I'll go back to the fact that we have some data that we're expecting to release early in the new year. We asked a series of questions around e-cigarettes, including how difficult it would be to get the substances and whether people think they are harming themselves by using the products.

Health committee  Several brands are at issue and are not produced by the same companies. We have samples of several product brands.

Health committee  There are two aspects, one being the awareness-raising campaign, and the other a regulatory project that could protect young people. We don't yet have the data that would allow us to determine if e-cigarettes lead people to start to smoke. As you mentioned and as we did as well, we can see that a growing number of young people are trying these products.

Health committee  That is a very good question. As we said there are 450 brands, and there are probably more. The last figure was 466, and this continues to grow. Indeed, certain brands contain nicotine and others do not. Most e-cigarettes that do not contain nicotine, that is to say the ones to be found on the licit Canadian market, are flavoured or scented and are disposable.

Health committee  A number of municipalities have taken action to ban e-cigarettes in places where smoking is not allowed, so anywhere there is a smoking ban there is now also an e-cigarette ban, and those municipalities go across the country. Most recently—I think just yesterday—Saskatchewan announced too....

Health committee  They're bans on e-cigarettes overall, whether or not they contain nicotine. The outside user, and in fact sometimes even the person using the product, can't tell whether or not there's nicotine in that product, so it's a global ban.

Health committee  I think we noted earlier that we'd been looking at what the U.S. in particular has been doing and what the EU has been doing. The EU came out in May with a directive around e-cigarettes. They're looking, essentially, at treating e-cigarettes that have a health claim and contain nicotine as a drug, those that do not have a health claim but contain nicotine as a tobacco product, and those with no health claim and no nicotine as a consumer product.