Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
This issue is far too serious to be politicized. I will try to work hard here today, as the member for Montcalm usually does, a colleague I am honoured to replace at this committee.
I am here today with a great deal of sensitivity and interest. As a teenager, I remember meeting a group working for drug harm reduction, which did so from a public health perspective.
I am an MP in a region that includes the city of Granby. We see that the crisis has spread beyond large urban centres. I recently heard it's even started happening in the community of Granby and that people died as a result. The crisis is actually lowering life expectancy in Canada.
Minister, I'd like to come back to the regional perspective on the situation. Is the government planning to invest anything so that new communities can access existing programs? Let me explain.
Recently, my colleague Luc Thériault went to meet stakeholders working in a centre located in a much more remote region than mine. They explained that people had to travel for two or three hours to access services, and there was no money to bring the services closer to them.
What are you planning to do to help people on the ground, not just in large centres, but also outside those areas, and even in the more remote regions?