I won't suggest anything about lawyers. It would be unbecoming of me as a guest of the justice committee to suggest something, Mr. Chair.
I, like my friend, Madame Boivin, am not surprised about the CMA's position. Clearly sport, especially a contact sport—and I'll use contact sport in a general term.... Mixed martial arts is a contact sport. In fact basketball is a contact sport. In fact Wilt Chamberlain said that basketball is a contact sport, but football is a collision sport. So it is a question of large folks quite often up against each other in one form or another, the difference being that there are certain rules.
Obviously there are certain rules in mixed martial arts, and I can appreciate what my friend, Mr. Albas, was saying earlier, because clearly I'm not someone who has participated in those things, albeit I headed a soccer ball for a long time and maybe that's what caused me to come into this field. I don't know. Then again I'm a Scotsman, so maybe that's the case.
I'm not surprised by what you have said. Actually it's hard to disagree that striking someone will cause an injury. I think we all know that. I think if Mr. Albas were to come over here and strike me on the side of the head—of course he would never do that—it could be hurtful and could do who-knows-what kind of damage. I think we all get that. The issue becomes what we do in a legal process. I think you said earlier you're not really prepared as a physician—a very qualified and eminently qualified physician, I may add—to try to do this.
Let me turn to your colleague in Vancouver, who talked about how we need to do harm reduction, because I actually know a fair amount about harm reduction. I come from a family whose careers are in Canadian mental health and who talk about harm reduction, especially with schizophrenics and bipolar folks who also are dually diagnosed with addiction issues.
So sir, I look to you to give us some suggestions given what you see, since you're looking at it at an upper level, if you will. These are prize fights, and quite often you might be a ring physician.
One of the things that strikes me about it—no pun intended—when I watch—and I only see things on television—is that the difference between boxing and cage fighting.... I don't want to use mixed martial arts in this sense, because it gives the wrong connotation sometimes, even though they use that. I think Mr. Albas is correct. Mixed martial arts as was taught by him and by his colleagues in the field may look a lot different from that. The difference is that in boxing if you knock the opponent down, you can't hit them again. But if you knock your opponent down in that particular cage, you can hit them again. The referee is supposed to step in and do all those sorts of things, but how many times have you seen someone, whose eyes are literally starting to roll back in their head, still receive two or three blows while they are on the ground? I don't mean on the way to the ground, because in boxing clearly you can hit an opponent on the way to the canvas.
What do you see as that harm reduction strategy you're suggesting that might actually be helpful for this committee to know about? Because I don't think we are going to get a legal opinion from either one of you, quite frankly, about the clause. I'm interested in what you have to say about that.