Health committee  If you ask the AMO that question, their answer will be yes. That is what the representatives were demanding, that a part of the revenue from the sale of cannabis be turned over to municipalities to fund recreation programs. Personally, I would like something more complex. Fundin

Health committee  Yes. Prevention has many elements to it. You start with education. In public education, we don't seem to have a coherent approach. We have probably 13 different approaches, one for each province or territory in the country. Then it becomes the ability to intervene early with kids

Health committee  It is certainly one of a range of prevention services. A few weeks ago, I gave a presentation for the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the AMO. That was also one of the conclusions that the representatives came to. In other words, prevention services, a range of prevent

Health committee  Absolutely. We've advocated for an investment in treatment from the money from cannabis. One can make similar parallels with the money from alcohol, where government is also making money. One can also say the same for money from gambling. The question to government is this: Shou

Health committee  We do have some program fees that we ask for, though if somebody can't afford it, that's not a barrier to treatment. We have a foundation we work with. It could be knocking on your door next week asking you for money, so it's a little bit of footwork.

Health committee  It's 200 youth, about a year and a half wait.

Health committee  I would tell you that we will put you on a wait-list and that you should be looking somewhere else. We don't encourage people to wait in the absence of service. We say that we will put you on a wait-list but you should be trying other options.

Health committee  Absolutely, the need grossly outstrips the capacity, and governments need to invest. I agree that “massive” is the right word.

Health committee  Like a lot of things in life, it depends. For us the cost of a hospital bed is about $460 a day. What we get from the government is really about $412. That gives us about $4.3 million for the 29 beds. It depends on your staffing model and how it is done. For instance, we are more

Health committee  I will answer really quickly. As I said, we have a social return on investment study. We're able to show that for every dollar the government invests in our program or in youth treatment generally, they are going to get a ten-time return. Why is it that people don't do that mat

Health committee  It's no to methadone but yes to Suboxone, and the reason is relatively easy. As I said, we start people off in the wilderness program. In Ontario, to be able to administer methadone, you have to be a member of a health college, whether that be as a physician, a nurse, a pharmacis

Health committee  You could administer it. It's a pill, basically, to be administered. You don't need to be a member of a health profession to do so.

Health committee  I can't answer that. I think there's a shift going on now. There's a little less methadone being prescribed and a little more Suboxone being prescribed.

Health committee  In a lot of metropolitan areas, going to a methadone clinic or whatever is no more of a hardship than anything else. You can go to the pharmacist and get your methadone there. We're an outlier in that we're in the woods, so we're not able to safely administer it.

Health committee  Thank you, and we'd like to thank the committee for the invitation. My name is Vaughan Dowie. I'm the CEO of Pine River Institute. I'm here with my colleague Dr. Victoria Creighton, who is our Clinical Director. We thought that the best contribution we could make to the committ