Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I thank all the witnesses for their presentations.
This question is for you, Dr. Wood. In the 1990s, in my community of the Downtown Eastside, where we had an epidemic of overdoses, at that time the medical health officer declared a medical health emergency in our neighbourhood. The truth of the matter is that people die from overdoses. We had a community rally, and a thousand crosses were planted in the local neighbourhood park to mark and honour each person who died. I get it that we need to have treatment.
Coming out of that effort, a table was initiated with all levels of government—I see Dr. Hedy Fry here today at committee—and we worked together between all levels of government to come up with the four pillars approach: harm reduction, treatment, prevention, and enforcement. Coming out of the harm reduction pillar was the supervised injection facility, which was evidence-based. Since that time, the facility has demonstrated that there were no fatal overdose deaths at that site, hence the opportunities for people to get onto treatment and an alternate course down the road.
Has the supervised injection facility in Vancouver been an effective program? Can you tell us, Dr. Wood? As I understand it, there is also a place called Onsite, upstairs from the supervised injection facility. I wonder if you can elaborate on that, and then talk about the critical link that is required following Onsite and what's missing.