Health committee  If I may, Mr. Chair, I would like to add to your point. What we've done, as part of our efforts to take a closer look at projects and understand the risks, is to, through consultations with experts in addiction medicine, understand what the top tier and the top thresholds of safe

Health committee  Thanks for the question. There was an expert advisory group that tabled a report prior to launching the projects. I'm happy to provide that to the committee.

Health committee  Sure.

Health committee  Thank you for the question. It's a very important question. I'll do my best to answer it. In some ways, it kind of goes back to the minister's fundamental position around what the federal strategy is and the work that we're doing with all provinces and territories. Our support a

Health committee  From where we sit, that is the government's strategy. It's a full continuum of services through prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery, and after-care supports—the whole continuum. We do a lot of work directly, as the minister said, in supporting community-level int

Health committee  Yes, I know.

Health committee  I don't mean to sound overly bureaucratic in the response. The way that we support the safer supply projects at the federal level is an application-based process. The projects that are being funded right now are those that made applications to us. To date, there aren't sites in

Health committee  Okay. Do you mean specific to safer supply or just generally to the crisis?

Health committee  I might have to get back to you on that. We have lots of conversations with indigenous communities about the crisis and we talk about all manner of interventions, but I would have to get back to you on whether there is a specific safer supply conversation.

Health committee  Thank you for the question. The policy around the prescribed alternatives—or “safer supply”, as it's referred to sometimes—exists and is well documented on the Health Canada website. That's the one we advise the minister on. To my knowledge, there's no—

Health committee  In the normal course of public service and giving advice to the government, we provide a range of options: for, against, big, small, fast, slow. In the context of executing on the safer supply initiative, we would have provided all sorts of advice on the manner in which the initi

Health committee  We provided the government much advice on how to legalize and regulate cannabis, yes.

Health committee  In the case of cannabis, the government had a policy that they wanted to move to regulate and legalize. The advice that we provided was on how to do that.

Health committee  No. We certainly provide advice to the minister.

Health committee  We provide advice to the minister.