Thank you very much, Chairperson, and welcome to our presenters today.
As you've heard, we're just beginning our study about best practices, scopes of practice, health human resources, and so on. It's a bit of a mouthful, and we're just beginning to get familiar with the topic and how we need to address it. So maybe our questions will be a bit general today.
Listening to what you each had to say, I have two questions. First of all, I have to say I was a bit surprised that none of you mentioned Health Canada's pan-Canadian health human resources strategy, which we understand from the background work that we had prepared is sort of the document or strategy that's overseeing a commitment that was made—I think it was made in 2005. That strategy outlines five areas, one of which is health human resource planning and forecasting, so that takes us directly into the issue of where there are shortages, how they're regionally based or within remote communities.
I guess my question is this. Who's doing that? Who's overseeing the planning and the forecasting? I can tell you that when we, and I assume this is for all members of the committee, meet with various professional associations, whether it's the nurses, or psychologists, or occupational therapists, or whoever it might be, this issue of disparity and shortages, depending on where you are, but particularly in remote communities, northern communities, comes up again and again. It certainly was a major issue identified in the 2004 health accord. My first question is whether the various departments that you work in federally are aware of this strategy. Does your department collaborate with other departments? It's meant to also be a provincial and territorial thing, not just a federal role. I'd just like to know, do you know who's responsible for it? Do you work with those people? That's one question that you could all address.
The second question, if I could just be quick about it, is this. Ms. Brenning, I really appreciated your presentation. There was one paragraph that you actually didn't read out, and I don't know whether you skipped over it or whether you didn't want to say it, but I thought it was good. It said health care needs to exist on a broad continuum ranging from addressing activities of daily living and emotional support to more complex medical interventions. It's at the top of page 6. We've heard previously that 80% of inmates have substance use issues. That's obviously a major concern. I wanted to ask you whether or not Corrections Canada uses a harm reduction approach—for example, needle exchanges, methadone—in looking at the issue of substance use from a multidisciplinary perspective and actually reducing the risk and the harm of inmates who may be involved, particularly with drug use. If you could address that, it would be very helpful.
Those are my two questions. Sorry to take so long.