Health Committee on Dec. 9th, 2025

[Natasha Crowcroft]

The rationale is that by providing a safe setting in which to use substances, that's a clean setting with clean equipment, you reduce transmission in several ways. For example, I've been involved in a tuberculosis transmission that was through nasal use of substances. It's not just about injection. Any access to substances can lead to the transmission of infectious diseases.

If you've ever seen the environments of addicts who don't have the ability to access a clean setting to use the substances that they're addicted to use, those settings are ideal for the transmission of all sorts of infectious diseases.

It's sometimes described as a syndemic, where this group in the population who are very vulnerable, very poor and have poor nutrition are mixing together often with other people who are using. They often have been subject to all sorts of disadvantages, which means they may not be vaccinated against recent childhood immunizations, for example. Therefore, there is a list of outbreaks that are linked to the use of substances, including outbreaks of diphtheria, for example, and the spread of antimicrobial resistance. They are all linked to that environment in which the uses occur.

[Maggie Chi, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Just to be absolutely clear, the program or the approach exists to keep folks alive until they're connected to treatment and care, so they are on the path to recovery. Is that correct?

[Natasha Crowcroft]

In the context of the toxic drug crisis, keeping them alive is critical, so if they do have an issue, there are people on hand to help them. It's very clear that the help they get saves lives.

[Maggie Chi, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Correct me if I'm wrong. I've seen the data and the data has been pretty positive—we haven't seen death. That means the program is working and it's connecting folks to the proper care that they need.

[Natasha Crowcroft]

The harm reduction program saves lives, yes.

[Maggie Chi, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Excellent.

Also, I want to clarify the federal role in harm reduction. Is it correct to say that Health Canada's role is limited to providing evidence-based guidance, reviewing exemptions and supporting public health goals rather than procuring and distributing supplies?

[Kendal Weber]

Yes. I would say that we do provide contribution funding to municipalities, non-governmental organizations and also provinces and territories for supplies. I would add that to the list.

[Maggie Chi, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

In my last minute, I will turn to CIHR.

I just want to pick your brain on the funding that you've mentioned in your request through the supplementary estimates. Through your collaborative approach, what are you seeing the benefit of and what are the roles? Just describe it in general.

[Jeff Moore]

Are you referring to overall funding or the funding identified through the supplementary estimates (B)?

[Maggie Chi, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

I mean through the supplementaries. You mentioned you had transfers from multiple departments. I want to see your collaboration efforts through that.

[Jeff Moore]

One of the goals of CIHR is to look at how we can collaborate for impact. We're seeing that through a lot of the efforts with other government departments. A good example is ESDC. I talked about the school food program there where they're actually transferring money to us and we're delivering that funding through one of our scientific institutes with their scientific director. We're looking at evaluating their school food programs, so that the impacts are from a learning health systems perspective, grounded in evidence and in science. That just gives you one example of how we're working very closely with certain departments.

Also, we received some money from—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dan Mazier]

That's good. Wrap it up.

[Jeff Moore]

Maybe I'll just stop there then with that example.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dan Mazier]

Thank you. I'm sorry I had to cut you off, but we have reached five minutes.

Madame Larouche, go ahead for two and a half minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Before going on, I'm going to ask you some questions, Ms. Weber.

A few questions have already been asked, but I'd like to come back to them, because we're talking about a contaminated drug crisis.

Is any part of the supplementary estimates aimed at strengthening the monitoring of opioids and illicit substances?

[Kendal Weber]

I can start and then I can turn to the Public Health Agency, which has an extensive surveillance program.

We do monitor the substances that are being used across the country, by provinces. The Public Health Agency also has an extensive surveillance of harms caused by opioids. They monitor hospitalizations and deaths.

At Health Canada, we also monitor waste water. A more recent program with investments from our border strategy includes us engaging in memorandums of understanding with municipalities and indigenous communities across the country to monitor the waste water for chemicals—over 500 substances.

[Nancy Hamzawi]

From—

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

I would ask you to answer quickly, please, because I have another question.

[Nancy Hamzawi]

Ms. Weber gave the broad outlines of our monitoring capacity, which is really deployed in co-operation with the provinces, territories and municipalities. It includes death counts and emergency department responses. We have a simulation model that shows what we're seeing and compares our observations to future possibilities based on trends observed to date.

We recently concluded work with our provincial and territorial colleagues to understand the factors behind the trends that we're seeing in this significant crisis.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

What investments are planned to improve the analytical capacity of federal laboratories?

Can anyone answer in 5 or 10 seconds?

[Nancy Hamzawi]

I don't have the exact figures, but their budget is essentially the same, minus about 4%.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Dan Mazier]

You have another 45 seconds. It's two and a half minutes.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Is the requested funding enough to address the gaps identified in the cannabis market's oversight?

[Kendal Weber]

Are you asking for the exact amount we have put into regulating cannabis?

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Yes.