Thank you.

Thank you for your warm welcome here, in Ottawa.

My name is Dan Williams. I am the Minister of Mental Health and Addiction for the Province of Alberta. I'm a policy-maker. I don't have lived experience. I haven't worked on the front lines. I am someone who gets to decide, with my cabinet and my colleagues in Alberta, how to respond to what is an addiction crisis that is ravaging Alberta, in our families and communities—and across the entire country, we see the same direction happening.

For you, as the opioid epidemic and drug crisis committee appointed to investigate this, I think it's important that we frame it in the appropriate way. The reason we have overdoses as we do and see this tragedy unfolding with our families and on our streets is that there is a disease. It's the deadly disease of addiction. It doesn't discriminate based on who you are, and it could affect anyone.

The reality is that addiction has one of two paths, only one of two ends—and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you and they could be lying to themselves. There are only two ends to addiction. As a policy-maker, as a province and as a country we need to accept this reality. It either ends in pain, misery and, tragically, given enough time, death, or it ends in treatment, recovery and a second lease on life.

That is why Alberta cares so passionately and believes we have this obligation to care for those who are in a vulnerable position, those who are suffering from this disease of addiction, which could end deadly or in hope and renewal, so that they can be family members again—brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers—and allow us to have a vibrant community with these individuals recovered and fully contributing again to those wonderful parts of our community that we love so much.

Therefore, Alberta has invested a huge number of resources to build this out. We understand that we have a choice as a province, just as we do as a country, between continuing down the path that we've seen for, let's say, the last 25 years in Canada in terms of a policy setting that is not producing the results that we need.... Our communities are increasingly unsafe. Individuals who are suffering from addiction do not get the dignity and care that every one of them deserves with the opportunity for recovery.

I think we, all of us—and especially you in this committee and those responsible for making the federal policy—have and share that same moral obligation that I have, as a minister in the Province of Alberta, and that each citizen of our country has, in wanting to see our communities improve and the dignity of everyone respected and cared for.

To give you some idea of the work we've done, we'll have invested, by the end of it, probably close to a billion dollars in capital. We're working towards that end when it comes to building the infrastructure. Alberta, along with the rest of the country, for many years did not built out the treatment capacity needed. We need to have an off-ramp out of addiction. If we see an increase in addiction happening, whether we talk about the oxycodone crisis—which propagated much of the opioid pandemic that we saw and still are in the midst of—or about meth, cocaine or any other substance, even alcohol, we need to have a path for people to leave addiction and end up not dead but in recovery.

That is why we invested in 11 recovery communities across the province, five of which are partnered with indigenous communities. Four are on the reserve of the indigenous community, knowing that they're disproportionately affected by this deadly crisis of addiction. We need to step into that space, not waiting but rushing in to support them in how they see.... As we heard previously, culture is an important part of that land-based healing, so it's culturally appropriate healing that goes along with the indigenous communities in Alberta.

We obviously invested not just in those 11 recovery communities for a full continuum of care, but we meet people where they're at. Our system funds millions of dollars for drug consumption sites and naloxone kits. We have therapeutic living units in our corrections facilities. We have access to treatment, which I know many of you got to see when you generously came to Alberta to see our program.

When it comes to the path forward for Alberta and for Canada, my request to each of you is to take, as we heard from earlier testimony, very seriously this crisis. We cannot continue with experimentation like decriminalization, which, happily, we saw walked back in Alberta. We in Alberta are opposed fundamentally to a policy, like safe supply, which hands out drugs to drug addicts in an attempt to deal with an addiction crisis.

We believe in hope and opportunity. We care about the compassion you need to care for those individuals who are struggling. We ask as well, as a federal body responsible for first nations, that you come to the table, do not avoid your obligations with first nations and partner with us and the first nations to provide hopeful solutions.

Thank you for your time, and I look forward to answering your questions.