Thank you very much for your question.
As you know, even before cannabis was legalized, there were several prevention and education programs to inform young people especially, but also the rest of the population, with regard to the risks associated with the consumption of cannabis.
As Minister of Health, I've always said that I did not want to encourage young people, nor the rest of the population, to consume cannabis. However, we also recognize that young people had access to it before legalization. Therefore, we wanted to protect our young people and put an end to the black market. That was in fact the objective of the bill.
That said, we are still going to invest over $108 million in education and prevention, since we want to make sure that we inform young people about the risks involved in consuming cannabis. It has already been a year and a half since we began setting up partnerships with several community groups who are helping us to do this. I could mention, for instance, Drug Free Kids Canada, with whom we have good co-operation. That organization has developed a work tool that helps professionals and other people who work with young people raise the topic of drugs with them. That type of conversation can sometimes be a bit difficult or delicate, and people don't always know how to go about it. This tool, which has been distributed to thousands of Canadians, helps stakeholders get the conversation started about drugs with our youngsters.
Our department is going to continue to establish working relationships with various community organizations. We have also developed our awareness campaigns, as have our colleagues from the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.
At this time, we want to make sure that our messages get through. There will thus be awareness-raising messages on television and radio. However, if we want to reach young people, we have to remember that they are different from adults. Personally, I still watch a lot of television, but young people are more inclined to use social media. And so our awareness campaigns aimed at young people have to be directed to social media.
The results we've obtained confirm that our messages are reaching millions of young people, and that our campaigns are working, because we go where the young people are. We want to ensure that young people are aware of the dangers of cannabis and impaired driving.