Yes, Mr. Chairman, thank you.
I think there's a couple of things that are important to clarify in relation to the follow-up we had wanted the department to do. And Madam Gosselin is correct. The department has done an awful lot and there has been satisfactory progress on a number of issues, and we recognize that.
There are a couple of pieces of analysis that I think have been touched on that might be worthwhile for the committee to reflect on. Some of you will remember that we produced an audit report in 1997 and again in 2000, and in those audit reports, we produced analysis using criteria that we had taken from various provincial regimes in terms of the number of different prescriptions that people had, the number of different doctors people had gone to, the number of different pharmacists that people had gone to. I would submit that this would be a good measure, because the department does have the information. It could be tracked, and that would show there would be anomalies.
And in all of the analysis we did, it was clear that in certain parts of the country there were particular problems. I think it would be fair to say that the department should really pay attention to that because some of these are particularly problematic.
In 1997 we reported that the department had done analyses in at least one of those problematic areas, where there had been a significant number of deaths. The department had done work in Alberta with the provincial coroners to get information, and granted, the methodology might not have been perfect, but they were able to draw links. At that time, the department reported that there had been 42 prescription drug-related deaths between 1986 and 1988, and further, there was one community of 500 people where there had been 15 deaths in four years.
I think it's really important that the department keep tracking that kind of information, because you might fix all the systemic things, you might fix all of the information system things, but the department has a broad responsibility for the health of first nations, and I know Madam Gosselin would agree. I think you need to track that kind of thing, because if you don't, it could still exist even though you fix some of the systemic things.