Health Committee on Feb. 5th, 2026

[Kendal Weber]

I'm sorry. Could you repeat the question? I thought you were asking whether they were going to evaluate the actual exemption, but I think you were asking....

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Now that the pilot program has ended, will Health Canada be reporting any results on the effects of decriminalization on addiction? We saw 6,000 overdose deaths in British Columbia. I'm wondering what the follow-up is going to be.

[Kendal Weber]

There are two elements to this. The Public Health Agency of Canada has surveillance of overdose deaths, and it reports on a quarterly basis. However, in addition, I would say, with regard to the decriminalization, we are receiving a final report from British Columbia that we will be able to add value with.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

That's on whether it was successful.

[Kendal Weber]

There is also independent research happening by the Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Matters, CRISM. It's undertaking—

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Is there a deadline for that report?

[Kendal Weber]

Yes, there is. It's a five-year, arm's-length evaluation of the exemption and its implementation.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

It'll take five years.

[Kendal Weber]

We started it at the beginning.

I'm sorry to interrupt.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

We won't know for five years the devastation that it's caused. In other words, there could be another pilot program starting. Why not?

Even Premier David Eby said a year ago that it wasn't working, yet it continued and continued.

Will Health Canada, upon completing this report, present it to this committee?

[Kendal Weber]

The arm's-length evaluation did not start today. It started midpoint or earlier in the exemption. Once Health Canada completes its full five-year review of looking at the data during the exemption and then following the exemption, it will deliver a report, and this could be shared.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

It needs to be shared, I believe, with this committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 15 seconds.

[Kendal Weber]

Yes.

What's also important is that the Province of British Columbia posts on its website the quarterly reports that it sends to us, Health Canada, and those are available today.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Over 6,000 people died. I think we need to accelerate the report so that this doesn't happen again.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Ms. Konanz.

Ms. Chi has the floor for the Liberals for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My question is for the official from CIHR.

We know that CIHR has invested heavily in digital health and data innovation. I want you to speak to how the connected care for Canadians bill will help turn that research into really great tools using clinics, hospitals and communities across Canada.

[Paul Hébert]

Member Chi, I would say that you've already heard my colleagues speak to what it means for doctors in our country. It is one of the tools that we hope will facilitate the care we give.

I live this every day as a practising physician when I'm out there. The fact that we're still sending faxes to one another is not a great idea.

What we want to do—all of us, I think—is build interoperability to start connecting the dots an awful lot more. We want to have a pipeline of information that we collect once, collect well and use responsibly to effectively make every possible use of it that we can.

The simple way to think of the bill is to change from an attitude of data hoarding to one of public trust in public good. We want our data to be useful every chance we get.

In research, what this means for us is largely that we use it to do clinical trials better and release the data. It also means that we can connect—as we were talking about before—our early-term screening. We start thinking about using the data all the way from preconception to death in a way that we not only can help our patients but also transform our economy. One can easily think of generating tools and approaches, predictive algorithms—that's what our research is about—to be useful in a way that changes our medicine of the future.

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

Thank you.

You alluded to the fact that the bill really creates a foundation for—

[Paul Hébert]

It's one of the pieces, yes.

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

—great data, trustworthy data, with the foundation supporting responsible AI in health care as well.

In your opinion, what are some of the promising areas of research that CIHR has already seen, whether in early diagnosis, personalized treatment or system planning?

[Paul Hébert]

I was talking to someone the other day, and the term used was “soup to nuts”. We do research on almost anything. The 18,000 scientists we just funded—as you can imagine—would do almost anything in your sphere of interest.

To be honest, data is everything we do. Science is about generating data, whether it's clinical science to improve the care we give or to image better...and everything.

I'll give you one example. Unfortunately, it's not Canadian, but this is where we want to be.

This past week, in The Lancet, our Swedish colleagues published a trial in a public health domain. They randomly allocated one group versus another and compared the use of AI-supported evaluations of breast screening against the standard of care, which is two doctors. In that, the AI-supported evaluation came out ahead. It decreased the workload of doctors by 44%. It decreased the rates.... Well, it found more cancers early on, with interval screening between two points in time. It found cancers earlier, and these were more treatable.

We want to do those kinds of studies in Canada. At this point, we are still wishing we could.

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

Thank you.

Earlier, you spoke a little about creating jobs and stimulating the economy.

With this bill and with our investment in science research, how do you see Canada's life sciences sector growing to create those high-quality jobs?

[Paul Hébert]

I do life sciences research, so thank you.

I would support all research.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 43 seconds.