Health committee  I will take your word for it.

Health committee  You're asking me for things that are not details that I'm aware of or that I know of.

Health committee  I'm the provincial health officer.

Health committee  You would have to ask Health Canada that.

Health committee  This is not an area of my expertise—

Health committee  I imagine there are. I don't know. Those are not areas that I focus on.

Health committee  I would say with all of the companies that, as part of my role as provincial health officer, I don't meet with industry, whether it's industry related to drugs or industry related to vaccines or any other thing. Those are not areas where I have knowledge, detailed knowledge, of companies.

Health committee  We've been working on this, and I mentioned this—it's public knowledge—when I came out with my report in February. I think we need to look at all options around providing people with alternatives to what's toxic on the streets right now. I have a report we've been working on that will be coming out in the next few months on that.

Health committee  I don't recommend any specific model. I think we need to continue—

Health committee  I'm not supporting any specific models. I think we need to look at all of the options that are available that have the important regulations around them and support them.

Health committee  Thank you. I think that is the important thing. We have seen increased visible homelessness. We know that. We know from data that, across this country, as we've come out of the pandemic, we've had increases in people living in poverty and with food insecurity, and that has led to more visible homelessness.

Health committee  When we declared the emergency—it was my predecessor who did that in 2016—it was really to raise awareness about this issue that was changing, and changing rapidly, and leading to people dying at an unprecedented level. It allowed us to pull together information. It allowed us to start working on harm reduction.

Health committee  That would vary. Maybe Dr. Bach would be able to give you more details around that. It varies. One of the things that—

Health committee  Of course it's not. We want access to treatment programs across the province. We've been working to scale up that access, as with programs that Dr. Bach mentioned, and for people to be able to access them anywhere in the province and have remote support, for example.

Health committee  I think parts of it certainly have. With any change in policy like this, there are always unintended issues that come up. We need to be pragmatic and address those.