Dr. Pauly, I'm sorry for putting you on the spot, but help the committee out. In response to Mr. Thériault, who said that the experts seem to have different opinions as to the evidence for safe supply, you said that you did a peer review and it seemed to pretty overwhelmingly show the benefits of safe supply.
Let me just point out what else our committee has heard. We asked Health Canada to appear before the committee. We had the experts who I think were behind approving B.C.'s request, and they seemed to be in favour of safe supply. They themselves admitted that there wasn't very good evidence for the benefits of safe supply. I would note the B.C. health officer, in a review of prescribed safer supply, said:
Most of the limited published peer-reviewed studies lack a control or comparison group and the actual intervention received by study participants is in most cases a combination of broader access to wrap around health services including [safe supply]...and primary care, making it difficult to attribute any benefits to PSS alone.
They suggested that they need to have more studies.
The Stanford-Lancet commission, which looked at the opioid crisis—and I would point out that these aren't a bunch of right-wing fanatics—in their study said, “the evidence clearly shows the folly of assuming that population health inherently improves when healthcare systems provide as many opioids as possible with as few possible regulatory constraints as possible.” They, too, were against safe supply. We talked to the head of that commission, and he said the problem with safe supply is that basically you're replicating what has caused the problem to begin with, which was doctors prescribing too many narcotics, people getting on them and then people having trouble getting off them.
Do you continue, though, to say that no, the evidence is clear that safe supply is good?