Justice committee  Yes. Canada actually has a very proud record with its CHIRP program, the Canadian hospital injury reporting and prevention program. It's a rather unique program that was instituted in partnership with children's hospitals measuring childhood injury. Canada does have a track record, then, of doing something like that.

Justice committee  Yes, the CDC in Atlanta has developed a program called WISQARS. WISQARS is a database that looks at injuries within the United States, broken down by county. It provides a lot of information. This problem, however, is so unique that you can't design a system on our old way of thinking.

Justice committee  It comes from the evidence. If we were to do things based on the evidence, education campaigns in public health have usually failed very miserably. The best example I can give you is from when AIDS first came out in the 1980s. In Australia they came out with a clever campaign of a bowler, who was the Grim Reaper, throwing a bowling ball down a lane and knocking all these people over.

Justice committee  The chief mentioned that we have, I think he said, “a wicked problem” in front of us. We're also on the verge of artificial intelligence. We have the capability today to link many different datasets and actually look for answers within those datasets. I'm not married to one model or another—you have more expertise than I in that area—but it has to reside somewhere where it's safe, has timely access, and is capable of feeding the information back to policy-makers, politicians, advocacy groups, and the public as well.

Justice committee  That's an excellent idea.

Justice committee  That question is the easiest one. The perception of getting caught changes people's driving behaviour. Engineering will always give you your greatest returns. Our vehicles today, driven at around 70 or 80 kilometres an hour, can crash, and everyone will pretty well survive in them.

Justice committee  The robust datasets should reside with groups that have the expertise right now. There are many national organizations across the country that have special interest in this. I would form a consortium for them and have them apply for the funding. The funding would be given out year by year based on performance.

Justice committee  It should be age 25, at a minimum. With anything less than that, you're not following the evidence. That's if you're going to go down the legalization route. If you're going to go down it, and it looks as though we are—I'm not for or against it, but I think you can read between my lines—then let's do it properly and put in place the data so that a year from now, or two years from now, we can measure the impact and we can course-correct.

Justice committee  Louis.

Justice committee  I like to share stories. Taking the cab in from the airport, I had an older hippie driving me. He said, “What are you up to today?” I said, “I'm going to this committee to talk about marijuana.” He goes, “Holy shit, marijuana. I used to smoke that all the time when I was a younger man, but the other day I was in the garage and the kids were smoking it, and I tried a hit.

Justice committee  I can't talk about this bill specifically, but what I can tell you is that I teach advocacy. The first thing I teach my advocate students is why we need advocates in the first place. Why do we need organizations such as this? If governments were doing their jobs properly and passing the right policy and right legislation, there would be no need for advocates within our society.

Justice committee  First of all, I'd like say that it's nice to come to Ottawa to see our tax dollars being well spent in renovating a building such as this. It is one of the nicest rooms I have ever appeared in. Good job. Getting to the bill before us, I don't know why I am here. I checked to make sure I was supposed to be here and I was told I was.