The first thing is that Nova Scotia took the lead in being co-chair of this process on behalf of the federal-provincial-territorial problematic substance use committee. They were our door into the PT process. The other co-chair was the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta. So we tried to get the right elements participating at that level.
Second, I guess the question is, why are we here? Perhaps I think it was a bit rhetorical. But nonetheless, on the purpose of the CCSA, our role is to develop—and I go back to that signal-noise thing—and to try to provide for you a very clear understanding of where, collectively, those who are charged with accountability and responsibility for the system from all levels of government, the not-for-profit and private sector, think we should be spending most of our time. First Do No Harm does that. It is not a federal strategy, any more than it is a PT strategy, any more than it is a College of Physicians and Surgeons' strategy. I think everybody would associate it as being the vision of how we need to deal with this issue across Canada, and there is an understanding that to address this deeply complex and diverse problem we need to have a collaborative approach to dealing with the solution. First Do No Harm is really an articulation of the what and the how we wish to deal with that problem.
In terms of the variations of harm across the country—and I'll ask my colleague Paula to jump in at any point afterwards—there are two things I would say. One is that I don't think any jurisdiction is unaffected by the issue of prescription drugs, whether opiates, which have received a lot of the attention in the media these days.... Here I want to underscore that this deals with three categories: stimulants, depressants, and opiates. So while we have seen scores of reports pointing to the need to address this issue, the actual granularity of the data is varied across the jurisdictions. But it's safe to say that no jurisdiction has escaped the issue and that they're all committed to dealing with it.
In your province there are very good triplicate programs for how to manage these. That isn't necessarily the case across the country. Part of First Do No Harm is to try to equalize, I guess, the level of rigour that is present in the system.