Public Safety committee  I'm not sure.

Public Safety committee  Without getting into a lot of technical detail, it's a slightly different chemical compound, but it works very much the same way as methadone, and it's administered differently. We introduced it because it's starting to be introduced in community programs and in other programs

Public Safety committee  Yes. It's placed under the tongue, as opposed to swallowed.

Public Safety committee  Just at a high level....

Public Safety committee  Yes. There are many community methadone clinics that run just like our program. When we developed our program, we developed it based on models out in the community. So there are a lot of methadone programs covered through provincial health care systems.

Public Safety committee  I think at this stage of the game, based on the evidence, CSC, in terms of harm reduction, does have a few initiatives in place, which I've stated, but we currently do not provide a needle exchange program or other such paraphernalia.

Public Safety committee  As a sample of how many women on methadone, on average we have about 700 offenders on methadone; in January there were 719 or so, and 55 are women.

Public Safety committee  Proportionally, I'd have to do the math.

Public Safety committee  Some people are on it for 10, 15, 20 years, or for life.

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with the specific complaints they were commenting on. I'd have to know some more specific complaints. The complaints we hear from offenders, generally speaking, have to do with wait times. Sometimes they may not be happy if they aren't admitted to th

Public Safety committee  That's a different question from what I thought I might get. I think there has been research to show that providing safe and sterile equipment in some environments does reduce the infection rate. However, within CSC our harm reduction strategies include, as I mentioned before, s

Public Safety committee  Generally speaking, methadone is prescribed for people with a diagnosis of opiate dependence. This goes above and beyond just abusing opiates: you are dependent on opiates. It's a long-term treatment. Generally speaking, it's not something that you go on and then go off. It's a s

Public Safety committee  Certainly the evidence in research conducted in various jurisdictions has shown that people on methadone are less likely to.... The whole purpose of having people placed on methadone is to reduce their need for drugs, which results in risk behaviours related to infectious disease

Public Safety committee  I think there are a number of health promotion initiatives within the prisons to help reduce the spread of infection. We do health education for inmates. One of the objectives of the methadone program is to help reduce the spread of infection, to reduce the demand for injected dr