Thank you all.
Let me start off by saying that like all of you here, my sympathies are overwhelmingly with those who've lost people to the drug crisis.
However, I want to talk about a different aspect of this problem.
A few months ago, I was in a downtown bar here in Ottawa—not that I do that very often. One of the colleagues I met up with was assaulted as he was going to the bar. Another one was threatened. Also, within about a month of that, I was returning down Wellington Street from downtown, from the Rideau Centre. My son, who is 15, was coming after me. It was nighttime, and there was someone out in the middle of the street yelling, screaming and accosting cars. I spoke to the parliamentary police and told this to them. They said that he's someone they know and not to worry about him. My son didn't know that, so I waited for him. I didn't want him to have to face some crazy person accosting him in the street.
There is certainly the perception among a lot of Canadians that a lot of downtown cores are out of control. Certainly there's also the perception that around places like safe supply and safe injection sites, things are worse—that there are people openly stoned in the street and getting CPR performed on them in the street, or that there are needles and excrement in the street.
One of the pillars of the Swiss approach to their drug problem is trying to decrease harm to society. I would note that this is not part of the Canadian approach. Does that need to be part of the approach?
I'm asking this of the representatives of the police out there: Do you agree that this is a problem? Do you agree that a lot of Canadians who aren't involved with drugs are increasingly unhappy with society in the downtown cores that are this way? Do you want to do more about this? If so, what do you need to better address this situation?
Let me start with the RCMP and then we'll go on from there.