I want to continue with what my colleague, Mr. Young, was speaking about concerning deaths that are investigated by police, commonly referred to as sudden deaths, that involve these types of drugs.
You may not be aware, Mr. Skinner, but my previous career was with the RCMP, and I have investigated a significant number of sudden deaths.
I want to hear from both of you with regard to a problem.
Most of the sudden deaths that police go to involve an overdose of some form, whether it be of an illicit or non-illicit drug, or of alcohol for that matter. They are difficult to investigate. The police officer goes in, but his or her authority is not to remove the body; his or her authority is just to determine what has happened.
I can remember many cases in which we would go in and we would see a multitude of pills and would think “sudden death”. Yes, the person is dead. We call the coroner. The coroner gives the authority to remove the body. From there the police have no investigation at all, because it is turned over to the coroner.
It seems to me, from what I'm hearing today and from what Mr. Young said, that we need to better identify how far the police need to go in these investigations. It seems to me that if you go into a residence in which you have a sudden death and in which you have a multitude of prescribed drugs—from more than one doctor, let's say, for argument's sake—it should ring some bells really quickly, but there's nothing there, because it's a coroner's case.
Do you have any suggestions?
Let's hear from Chief Mander and then Dr. Skinner.