First of all, I'd like say that it's nice to come to Ottawa to see our tax dollars being well spent in renovating a building such as this. It is one of the nicest rooms I have ever appeared in. Good job.
Getting to the bill before us, I don't know why I am here. I checked to make sure I was supposed to be here and I was told I was. What I've tried to do is assemble my 35 years as an emergency physician and as someone who advocates for injury to share with you what I think are the most salient points that I've heard to date and in my preparation for coming here today.
Canada already has one of the highest rates of utilization amongst our young, and they are already driving on our roads. For those of you who are foolishly thinking this problem is going to start in July 2018, the problem is before us right now.
That's why when the CDC takes a look at how we compare internationally with other countries, we don't fare very well. This gentleman, Michael, just alluded to part of the reason. He said these things are called “accidents”. They're not accidents. They're part of a disease process, and that disease is the leading cause of death for Canadians under the age of 45. Under the age of 35, motor vehicle injuries are the leading cause of death in that age group. Between the ages of one and 19, injury is the leading cause of death.
What Canada has is thus an injury problem that's about to be compounded by new legislation that's going to legalize the use of cannabis. What you're going to see is what we've seen in Washington and Colorado. There's going to be an increase in fatalities. There's going to be an increase in young people, especially, trying cannabis. One in six of them is going to become addicted.
Addiction is a disease. It's not a weakness of character. These young addicts—and they are before us today, showing up in our emergency department on a regular basis—are not getting the treatment they need. If we cannot meet the demand today, we are definitely not going to meet the demand in July.
My recommendation is that we stop for a second and say that if Canada is really only the third country starting to dabble in legislation, we could do something that's uniquely Canadian and establish robust datasets that allow us to actually measure the consequences—the human consequences, the financial consequences, the disruption to our health care system and to our justice system—so that we have evidence to base our decisions on.
Right now, you're about to meet an industry, the cannabis industry, that is going to be far more sophisticated than the tobacco industry. They're going to normalize marijuana use, as being good for you. This whole notion of medicinal marijuana has shown you that this is a drug looking for a purpose.
People who want to smoke marijuana can go ahead and smoke marijuana. I think our responsibility as physicians and your responsibility as policy-makers is to get this right. Other countries have not gone down this path for a very good reason. If we choose to go down this path because it's an election promise or we think it's the will of the public, then let's be prepared to put our thinking hats on and actually measure the consequences, because there will be consequences.
We're stuck in old paradigms. Who says that it has to be police officers who administer the sobriety test? If you go to the County of Strathcona in Alberta, I'll tell you, those ladies and gentlemen know how to keep their roads safe. They use peace officers, sheriffs, and a combination of different tools.
I'd like to get to the question and answer period, because I would like to make absolutely sure that the questions on your minds are answered before we leave today. I can tell you right now, however, that anything that takes away from that 1.6 seconds in a vehicle.... When a driver is fully attentive—eyes on the road, hands on the wheel—and sees something and decides what to do and reacts, it takes 1.6 seconds.
We have already passed legislation that says it's okay to use a cellphone hands-free, which is faulty legislation not based on evidence. That's already causing carnage on our roadways. The chief who was sitting here talked about the cumulative effect of marijuana, fatigue, alcohol, other drugs in our vehicles, along with all the distractions. It just makes natural sense that we're going to see an increase in the carnage on our roadways.
Now, the good news is that automated vehicles are coming down the pipeline. Once automated vehicles are on their own, that is truly about the only thing that's going to save us from this carnage. People can smoke as much as they want and do whatever they want in these vehicles. These vehicles will drive themselves, and they will not crash as long as humans keep their hands off the controls.
My advice is this. Let's set up some robust data-measuring systems to truly measure the consequences of what we're unleashing here so that not only Canadians can learn, but provinces can learn, and other countries can learn from our experiment, because this is an experiment in progress.