Thank you for the questions.
To start, I just want to express my deepest condolences to Mr. Charles and Ms. MacDonald for sharing their testimony.
I'll start with saying that for first nations people, most often the underlying reason why people choose to use substances is trauma—the state of their mental health—whether that's from historical experiences, contemporary experiences of trauma or intergenerational experience of trauma. People use substances because they want to change how they feel. That's probably very similar for people other than first nations people.
Here in British Columbia, of course, we are quite concerned, as I shared the data for first nations people in B.C., particularly about the decrease in life expectancy, which is mainly driven by the toxic drug crisis public health emergency. As you've mentioned, there are the various states of declarations of emergency regarding the toxic drug crisis in different areas across the province by first nations communities or tribal councils, etc.
In answer to your question, we feel that the level of funding that we could leverage against the toxic drug crisis broadly probably isn't there. For example, I've said before that the amount of funding that was directed to the COVID-19 pandemic compared with what has been allocated for addressing a public health emergency that's now into its ninth year, where we have lost many more people due to toxic drugs than we did to the COVID-19 pandemic, sort of says something.
I think we've already spoken at this committee about stigma.
