First of all, I'd like to give notice of a motion:
That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee undertake a study on the treatment and prevention of cancer in Canada, including the state of current research on diagnosis and treatment of cancer; that the committee allocate up to [eight] meetings to this study; that the committee report its findings and recommendations to the House; and that, pursuant to Standing Order 109, the government table a comprehensive response to the report.
I wasn't going to go here, but I heard the testimony.
Jennifer, I know you're locked in conversation there, but you talked about diversion and safeguards for diversion. I don't want to make my 30-plus years of being a doctor totally useless. I listened to the safeguards and I have some questions.
You said, “patient screening”. I've been doing this for 35 years. When I started, I used to think I could tell who was reliable and who wasn't. I remember literally seeing a nun come in who wanted benzodiazepine or some narcotics and stuff. I said, “Of course. She's a nun. I'll give her a prescription. She is honest.” Then a guy came in with a lot of tattoos and a muscle shirt, and I said, “Well, I ain't giving them to him, because he's unreliable.” In the 35 years since, I have not figured out beforehand who is going to be reliable and who could possibly be selling it. I would say that, even if you get to know your patients well, you don't know. Even when little grannies come to you and say it's because of their bad arthritis, you don't know whether they're selling it. I've heard from the cops that they know places where old people go and sell to dealers.
As to an agreement, if somebody is going to sell their drugs.... I don't think you're going to trust them to make an agreement with you and sign a paper. It's not, “Okay, you can trust them now.”
As to regular urine tests, they are positive-negative. I've seen those. I worked in a clinic that does them. It's positive or negative, so if you give somebody eight Dilaudid tablets to take home, all they have to do is take one, then go and sell the other seven. Their urine is going to be positive one way or the other. That wouldn't seem to me to be all that reliable.
I think you had some other safeguards. I think there was a protocol for dealing with diversion occurring. Do you have other protocols?
Let me mention briefly in passing that I think the British Columbia officer of health, in reviewing the safe supply situation, recommended that the fallback position be observed treatment. I am not sure what the recommendation is on observed treatment.
Ya'ara Saks repeatedly mentioned Switzerland. In Switzerland, all the studies on heroin-assisted treatment are for observed treatments. Certainly, in talking to a lot of experts in addictions.... They've been looking for the same thing, which is observed treatment, possibly with intravenous fentanyl or oxycodone. However, it doesn't seem as if there is funding there for it at the moment. Is there contemplation on providing more funding?
In fact, some of the addictions people I talk to have said that going home with the pills is the poor man's choice, because they don't have the money to do observed treatment, which is where the evidence is.
I got off topic.
If there are more safeguards, you can talk about that. Also, what is the plan in terms of the possibility—for the real, hard-core addicts, as in Switzerland—that they are provided with directly observed treatment rather than pills to take home?