Thank you very much, Mr. Johns, for the question and good morning, committee members.

The fact is that the Canada Health Act only covers services delivered in hospitals and by physicians, which means that services like counselling and psychotherapy—those upstream interventions that Dr. Conrod spoke to such as addictions treatment services—all fall out of scope. That means that people who are looking for life-saving addictions treatment services and counselling services that can prevent the worsening of symptoms have to either go without or pay out of pocket.

They go without because they simply can't afford that treatment as an option. That means that the symptoms worsen over time to the point where they are dealing with highly complex issues resulting in criminal activity and repeated hospitalization, which ultimately cost our system more and is harder to treat.

We also see the increasing prevalence of the delivery of addictions treatment services by private providers, which means that there is no accountability, no standards, no regulatory oversight and people have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to get into these programs. I've heard of stories where families have to take out second or third mortgages in order to pay for their family members to have access to this treatment.

It's just not considered part of our public universal health system.

The solution that is on the table right now is to create an amendment to the act that would explicitly include a reference to “community-delivered”, just like the services that Mr. Sword was so sorely looking for, for his daughter and other community members. This would create an inclusion in provincial and territorial health insurance plans, so that people can get the care they need when they need it.