Fortunately, or unfortunately, as an emergency physician, I am familiar with being interrupted.
To come back to the point regarding our concerns about the red flag law provisions currently in this bill, the requirement to go to court is a significant roadblock to the effectiveness of this part of the legislation. It would need to be combined, we feel, with the allowance for physicians, particularly emergency physicians, to report issues of concern of higher risk to police so that intervention could occur in a timely manner.
There is one example of a red flag law in Canada already and that's Anastasia's law in Quebec. It has also been rendered less effective because of the lack of resources that have been provided in order to support its use and to educate the public and physicians on how to use it appropriately. We would also call for adequate resources in terms of knowledge dissemination, education and the ability for proper response to occur once a situation has been reported.
Finally, as emergency physicians, we continue the call we've been making for many years for appropriate resources for research and data gathering, so that we can have more accurate information and scientific evidence on which to make further policy decisions.
I believe that was my five minutes, Chair. I appreciate the time.