Health committee  I really can't guess.

Health committee  I'm not sure I said that it wasn't working, but I do think that there's more that can be done in the area of prevention and public education. I think there are two components to that. One key component is about prevention, writ large, and the role that we and the provinces and territories have in schools and in helping children to understand what drug use means and what drugs look like.

Health committee  I think it depends. When you use substances, it's very difficult to determine. It depends on how much you used and how concentrated that dose was. What we do see is that sometimes immediate psychosis, immediate very difficult effects, but in terms of how long that high lasts, what we can say is that it is very variable, and it's so dependent on what you're taking.

Health committee  I think that's realistic, but again, some of those immediate effects are in that first period.

Health committee  The easy answer to that is, no, we do not. We know that in 2014 there were 220,000 people waiting for addiction treatment services in Canada. That's part of the reason that we've recently made a big investment in making sure that treatment services are available through this emergency treatment fund.

Health committee  I think this is an area that we've been paying a tremendous amount of attention to, and we have partnered with departments across the federal government. Really I think the first piece is sharpening this evidence base, so it's addressing key information gaps around the socio-economic data.

Health committee  I think the issue of housing security is one that's important for all Canadians. I know we are working hard to move that forward. I'm not an expert in that area but what I can say is that there are direct links between housing and problematic substance use in Canada. We were very pleased to be able to work with our colleagues to change some of their policies to ensure that someone is no longer required to be substance-free in order to access housing for some of their programs.

Health committee  I'm not an expert in provincial requirements for various treatment beds. The recent funding provided by Health Canada through the emergency treatment fund that's being negotiated with each of the provinces allows us to scale up all forms of treatment including treatment beds, where that's appropriate, and to make them available across the country.

Health committee  It's a good question. We set out the parameters that required how provinces would spend that money and what kinds of treatment forms would be allowable. We did not—

Health committee  I think we have recently made significant investments in the area of research related to problematic substance use. Through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research we have funded what's essentially a network across Canada, like the Canadian research initiative in substance misuse, which has four nodes across the country and is doing significant research in the area of all forms of problematic substance use.

Health committee  I will let Michelle answer that.

Health committee  The evidence we have is not necessarily related directly to opioids. It's related to people who come into supervised consumption sites to use those various products. Indeed, you are right. There have been a fair number of studies done and we have a very good literature to indicate that supervised consumption sites overall reduce harms and don't increase crime.

Health committee  Not exactly. It's 40% of people in Kelowna, but the numbers vary drastically across the country and this data is not perfect data. It's being reported by supervised consumption sites, and we have some sites that have been reporting longer than others.

Health committee  For example, we see that in Montreal cocaine remains the drug of choice. In Ottawa, it's hydromorphone. Again, in Vancouver, it remains heroin and other related opioids.

Health committee  Those are all the same thing. In fact, there is a whole series of other words that we also use to describe this category. Meth, crystal meth and methamphetamines are all a category of drugs that are amphetamines, which can also be referred to as speed. The idea is that it accelerates your overall responsive system, as opposed to opioids, which depress that system.