Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's wonderful to be back here at the finance committee today.
I think that this is an incredibly timely opportunity for us. As many of my colleagues have mentioned, this is an omnibus bill, and the budget has much wider implications, to a point that we don't quite understand what the implications of all of the changes in the budget are because we haven't had the opportunity to actually have those conversations, so then it becomes a bit of a circular conversation.
One thing I'm going to bring up that is rather concerning to me and that many Canadians have brought to me is the amount of government money that is going toward so-called safe supply contracts. We see this happening and we don't quite know exactly how much. The government hasn't been very clear or upfront with exactly how much this is. This is precisely why my colleague Garnett Genuis, from Fort Saskatchewan, brought forward a motion specifically to deal with getting to the bottom of where the government contracts are when it comes to so-called safe supply or prescribed alternatives, or whatever mot du jour the government has decided is the moniker they will use for hydromorphone, Dilaudid or any other drug that's being used in so-called safe supply programs.
We don't want it just from the Government of Canada; we would like to have the contracts with all provincial and territorial governments, because it's absolutely important that we actually be able to see these in an unredacted form so that we can get to the bottom of how much government money is actually going toward this because, effectively, it is tax dollars that are going toward this program.
Just yesterday there was a really interesting podcast. I would recommend everyone listen to it. It was with Brian Lilley and Dr. Julian Somers. Dr. Somers is an addiction physician in British Columbia. Through the course of this podcast, he talked about how not only did the B.C. government flood the streets with dangerous opioids, as I think most everyone at this point is well aware of, but it was using flawed and unproven studies to justify this in the first place, under the guise of the pandemic.
The truly alarming information that came out of the podcast was that those who were responsible for leading the charge on pushing for the so-called safe supply to be put into place in British Columbia also created businesses so they could profit from the so-called safe supply, and these same promoters of the so-called safe supply grew friendlier and friendlier with big pharma through this process. If that's not a conflict of interest, I'm not quite sure what would be considered to be more of a conflict of interest. I think this points to the need to get to the bottom of this.
On this budget, we haven't had the opportunity to have these conversations. I think it is incumbent upon us to hear from Mark Carney. He has been able to present on a number of different topics since his time as the Governor of the Bank of Canada, as he is preparing himself for what will be his Liberal Party leadership bid here, or the supposed leadership bid. He has gone on a number of podcasts. I've actually listened to him on a number of different occasions talking about—