Health committee  Good morning to the committee, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I'm appearing on behalf of the chief medical officers of health for the 13 provinces and territories. I'm providing a collective public health perspective, not jurisdictional positions from an

Health committee  I need to emphasize I'm not here representing the jurisdiction of Nova Scotia. I'm here representing the Council of Chief Medical Officers of Health. But I will say that, like many other provinces, we're working as hard and fast as we can through a complex situation. My last poi

Health committee  Yes, the goal is to bring people into a legal market, but a legal market that is driven by the objectives of public health and public safety, not for profit.

Health committee  I don't disagree that we need to bring in edibles as part of this, but the world of edibles becomes very complex, and I think it's appropriate that we do this in a staged approach. There are enough complexities right now, as I'm sure you're well aware of from your hearings this

Health committee  I have two thoughts. It certainly creates a number of problems around continuing to normalize cannabis as totally socially acceptable. In Nova Scotia, we have had meetings with owners of rental properties and there are a number of substantive and real concerns, from their perspec

Health committee  I'm one of the senior officials from Nova Scotia on the FPT senior officials working group that has been working for over a year. From the outset we have been putting forward the need for a robust conversation with Canadians around cannabis and around the coming changes in the le

Health committee  Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee today. I'm appearing on behalf of provincial and territorial chief medical officers of health and am providing a collective public health perspective, not individual provincial-territor

Health committee  No, as I said, I'm representing the provincial and territorial chief medical officers of health from the 13 provincial and territorial jurisdictions.

Health committee  I'm not sure what you're referring to. I think we all bring a perspective.

Health committee  Well, I think we all bring our opinions to the table to be heard by the committee, and sometimes those opinions may be in conflict with other people's opinions and interpretation of evidence.

Health committee  I think it's a selective use of evidence. As I said, when you look at anything, you have to look at the totality of all the evidence available, and when you look at the totality of all the evidence on plain packaging, it is very clear that plain and standardized packaging has an

Health committee  So also is advertising.

Health committee  Well, again, if you look at the totality of the evidence.... My understanding from people who have looked at this in detail is that the evidence does not support that plain packaging creates a significant increase in the use of contraband products, especially when you have plain

Health committee  My understanding is that the plain and standardized packaging still requires tax stamps and other identification that will allow a distinction to be made between legal tobacco products and contraband tobacco products.

Health committee  Every time any successful steps have been made in tobacco control in the last couple of decades—whether it's smoke-free places, restricting point-of-sale advertising, increasing pricing—the same argument is always brought out: that it will increase contraband. I've had direct c