Health committee  You mentioned agreement. I think it's important that we rapidly and emergently scale up the scope of the spectrum of all interventions that people need to survive this crisis. I've been asked a lot of questions about safe supply today. Obviously, I think many Canadians could be k

Health committee  Qualitative research is done by experienced academics and researchers who have been trained in qualitative methodologies. These things go through ethics review panels. The methodologies are examined and are closely followed. Anecdote is different. Anecdote is asking one person w

Health committee  I was thinking hard about what I want to leave this committee with. In our program, as safe supply clinicians, we see the deaths of so many people who cannot access safe supply. We knew them and still care about them. When these people die, Mr. Johns, we identify their bodies.

Health committee  Yes. There is an unmet need. Because safe supply programs have a limited capacity in terms of the number of people they can take in, the number of those who benefit compared to the number of those who are not able to access it results in a lot of translation between those two pat

Health committee  Yes, it sets my brain on fire a bit, to be completely honest, because it is simply not possible for safe supply to be driving these deaths. It's not possible, with the number of people receiving it compared to the number of people who use drugs and the number of people who are dy

Health committee  Just to be clear, 225,000 are not receiving safe supply. It's 4,500 of 225,000 who are receiving it. As for getting ahead of this crisis, I'd say the horse is not just out of the barn; it's all the way down the country laneway, and we're just chasing it and trying to get it bac

Health committee  I take them very seriously. First of all, they are self-described leading addiction physicians. There are 30 people who signed that letter. There is also a letter that was signed by 130 experts in substance use care supporting safe supply. That letter gets a lot less attentio

Health committee  Absolutely. I think we've heard references to the CMAJ paper a couple of times. I would like to reiterate that the CMAJ paper showed 50% reduction in poor medical outcomes and 50% reduction in cost only from safe supply prescribing. Since then, we've been able to add the wrap

Health committee  Maybe, but maybe not. The price of fentanyl has also dropped dramatically. Back in 2016, when we started, a point of fentanyl was $40 to $50. A point of fentanyl is now maybe $10, often less. You have Costco-sized buys of fentanyl, where people are getting better deals for a la

Health committee  Of course it does.

Health committee  They're not being sold to kids. Our diversion protocols in London are very robust, so every single—

Health committee  Yes, but I don't cause diversion. It is not my responsibility. Every single person who is seen in the safe supply clinic receives a urine toxicology at every single visit. We monitor people very closely. Is it a perfect system? No, it's not—just like methadone monitoring throug

Health committee  Our patients actually really welcome that feedback, because what we do with people's urine toxicology is that we actually summarize it. When people give urine, they know they're giving information to their community about what's present in the drug supply. It helps us to know wha

Health committee  I think that if I had the answer to that question, we may not be having half of the discussion that we're having today. How do I interrupt misinformation? I don't know. It's so much easier to spread misinformation and disinformation than it is to actually rebut it with truth. I

Health committee  In the two patient stories I discussed near the beginning of this session, I highlighted two women, one with HIV and what was considered palliative AIDS, and another who was declined a heart valve replacement because she was a person who used drugs. That is stigma in action. The