Justice committee  Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here, and I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me to speak today. It's an honour to appear before you. My name is Donald MacPherson. I am the director of a new and emerging national organization, the Canadian Drug Policy Coalit

Justice committee  Okay, thank you.

Health committee  Thank you very much. I'm the executive director of the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition based at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Thank you for inviting me to speak to the committee today on such a critical issue for Canadians. Our organization has membership of about 70 o

Health committee  Yes, I need about a minute.

Health committee  On the issue of displacement in the U.S., using the combined data from the 2002, 2004, 2008 to 2010 national survey on drug use and health, a recent study has shown that 77% of those reporting both non-medical prescription pain relievers and heroin use in the past year were found

Health committee  On your first question, Ms. Davies, I think that's why we prefaced our presentation with the notion that this is incredibly complex. The witness talked about so-called big pharma. I think that's important. All you have to do is go to the U.S. and watch TV to see the promotion of

Health committee  That's a very tough question, and I wouldn't really use the word “recreational”. Much of the off-label use of opioids could be self-medication. There could be a whole range of reasons that people might be engaged in the non-official market for opioids. Certainly, if you go from

Health committee  We're referencing one of the recommendations of the “Do No Harm” document. Clearly that is one of the key areas that needs to be looked at, although it's one of several areas that need to be looked at. We're just promoting the notion that we've taken a very hard evidence-based lo

Health committee  First of all, the federal government needs to be playing a huge leadership role in education. It comes in under the prevention language in the CCSA document. It's finding a way to show the leadership to make responding to accidental overdose deaths common knowledge in communities

Health committee  Absolutely. I agree totally with Dr. Selby. Having an agitated person in front of you is much better than having a person who is not alive. It's great that Ontario is doing their work. The BC Centre for Disease Control is doing a pilot program too. These programs seem to be ha

Public Safety committee  Thank you for inviting me to speak to this committee today on such an important issue for Canadians, especially those experiencing severe addiction and mental health issues. In our brief, which is a collaboration with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, we have outlined many of

Public Safety committee  What Bill C-2 doesn't take into account is the tremendous amount of consultation that goes on at the city level through Development Permit Board hearings, and the notification of residents of any new use, whether it be a detox centre, an injection site, or a police department. Th

Health committee  I'll begin by thanking the committee for the invitation to appear today to discuss this important issue with you. I have been working in the field of drug policy for over 25 years at the community level and then as the drug policy coordinator for the City of Vancouver as we crea

Health committee  In the long term, yes. I think we underfund addiction and mental health services to a great extent across the country.

Health committee  It's not easy to have these discussions with some sectors of society. What we learned in Vancouver in implementing the four pillars drug strategy, which had a very big focus on harm reduction, was that if you get people together in a room and really talk about the common goals, y