Thank you very much.
First of all, thank you to the witnesses for being here today. I'm interested to hear your presentations and what each of your departments is doing.
Mr. Bhupsingh, you mentioned in your brief that there's increasing evidence to suggest that illicit use of prescription drugs is a major public safety concern. Could you table any documents you have that actually give us that evidence? I don't know whether you're talking about polls or reports that have been done, or surveys. I'm not sure what you're referring to, but if you could table that with the committee, it would be very helpful.
The other thing that strikes me in hearing the presentations today is when we hear about what's taking place in terms of the drop-off day. I have no problem with the idea that there's a national drop-off day, and that we're involved in organizing it, and that there was a resolution at the UN, but it seems to me that to focus on a policy of appropriate return is sort of after the fact. I didn't hear any of you speak about what we do in a systematic way to prevent abuse in the first place.
In B.C., we have systems within our pharmacare program and through pharmacies where checks and balances are in place to ensure that people aren't shopping around for prescription drugs. It's hard to know whether any of your departments, or Health Canada for that matter, are involved in trying to promote something like that on a national level.
My question is, why are we focusing so much on after the problem has already happened, as opposed to putting systems in place?
Mr. Head, you said you do have systems in place. Maybe you can address that in terms of what we can learn from that, but I am concerned that we don't seem to have any systematic way of dealing with this issue. It seems to me that looking at it solely from a law enforcement argument is missing the boat. We need to look at how the system itself, in terms of the dispensaries, ensures that we're minimizing, as much as possible, any abuse from taking place.
Could any of you address that?