Health committee  Thank you for the question.

Health committee  Okay. The CCSA needs resources to support the implementation of the strategy and, more specifically, to coordinate the working groups we listed earlier—the five working groups and the action teams. We have requested financial support from Health Canada to be able to take on that role....

Health committee  From a CCSA perspective, we would look to the AFN to be a guide in this. There was no systematic examination of first nation needs in other jurisdictions. I was recently asked to chair the development of a consensus strategy for New Zealand, where the Maori and Pasifika people were very much represented.

Health committee  Absolutely. The Assembly of First Nations is looking at this matter. I don't know if there has been a systematic look across the country.The only point I would underscore is that the problem we're facing here is a problem of rich countries. If you go to the United Nations tomorrow, you'll be arguing for access to essential medicines.

Health committee  Exactly. I also want to underscore the fact that we learned, as we usually do when we sit down with first nations folks, that the construct of pain is very different among first nations people. As they describe it, the intergenerational pain doesn't necessarily have to be a physical pain.

Health committee  I would certainly agree. Perhaps I'll direct the attention of the clerk to flag for the members afterwards in the report, under the monitoring and surveillance recommendations, point one in particular. It's really to standardize the key elements of the prescription drug surveillance system in Canada.

Health committee  Thank you, Dr. Fry. The issue of risk reduction is a key principle throughout this entire document, the first point being that we should not immediately turn to a pharmacological response to pain or to some ill that someone is facing. There's a variety of other interventions, whether they be chiropractic, massage, or a variety of other ones.

Health committee  The way I would address that is perhaps in the manner that we pull together the strategy. First of all, the federal government is very present, as you know, on reserves, first nations, and non-insured health benefits and the like; there's a significant investment. I'll let Health Canada speak to their actions.

Health committee  I would direct your attention to the fact that we'll be leaving behind with the clerk some short summary documents. Essentially, for 2010-11 approximately 1.5% of Canadian students from grades 6 to 12 reported past-year use of tranquilizers to get high or for non-medical purposes.

Health committee  Grades 6 to 12, and it's about 1.5%; that's for non-medical use by young students. What we are hearing, however, around the issue of benzodiazepines is primarily around the prescribing for women.

Health committee  In particular, we are hearing that this is a population that we need to be looking at in addition to seniors. So it's not limited to any age group, per se. I would again underscore, picking up on Madam Adam's question, that the data here is as good as we have but by no means sufficiently robust to say that we all have to charge this way.

Health committee  I can speak to the broader point of where we are at CCSA in terms of the implementation of First Do No Harm. As I mentioned in my remarks in French, we've developed action implementation teams composed of the same individuals and organizations that helped create the recommendation, and who are at the table helping with implementation.

Health committee  Certainly. The notion of awareness of the issue crosses a number of populations. The first area is around the prescribers, for them to understand the impact and the extent of this issue, and second is around the patients themselves and the general population to understand how they can be more educated around the issue of prescription drugs.

Health committee  The prescription monitoring programs would be under the monitoring and surveillance section. You'll see that there are three elements there.

Health committee  Right. The initial challenge in this whole strategy was trying to figure out who should be at the table. The whole notion of having a prescription monitoring program—which gets to your other point about how dispensing and the whole supply chain is monitored and who is intervening at which point, whether it be for physicians who are perhaps prescribing it in a manner inconsistent with others to allow for a flag to be raised for the college to go in and ask why they are prescribing in this manner, to monitoring the actual transaction of the prescriptions, and on from there so to speak—is captured under monitoring and surveillance.