Thank you so much.

For introductory purposes, my name is Sumantra Monty Ghosh, but I go by Monty. I'm an assistant professor at both the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta, as well as a frontline physician who works with people who use substances.

I have a strong area of focus around research. Specifically, my research areas include the national overdose response service, which is a phone line that people can call after using substances alone. Seventy per cent of individuals using drugs and dying of overdoses are dying alone. This line helps provide them with support. They just call the line if they're using drugs alone, and they're paired up with a person with lived experience who monitors them. If they have an overdose event or drug poisoning event, EMS will be dispatched to their place.

I also do studies on waste-water testing, specifically in Calgary and the surrounding regions. With waste water in particular, we're looking at monitoring and quantifying substances within waste water, over 48 substances, including carfentanil, fentanyl and methamphetamines. We're also looking qualitatively to see if there are new compounds entering the drug supply. We've had a lot of success with monitoring this. Using this data, we've had an early detection warning system put in place to tell other practitioners that there could be concerns with the waste water. This has also helped us predict and determine why potential spikes and overdoses might happen. As an example of this, back in July 2023, we had a large spike in overdoses in Calgary, and we noticed at the same time that there was a large spike in carfentanil and xylazine within the waste water itself.

Last but not least, a large study was done that we just completed—although not published as of yet—looking at the community's perceptions around supervised consumption services. It included over 2,500 individuals who live in communities across Canada and are not health care providers or people with lived experience to see what their perceptions of supervised consumption services are and what the impacts of them are on their communities. This data is not published as of yet, but we're moving towards publishing it reasonably soon.

I'm glad to talk about any of these topics with the committee. I'm glad to talk about decriminalization as well, which is another area that I'm very much focused on. Last but not least, because I work within the recovery systems of care in Alberta and have a lot of experience with that, I can also share some of those experiences, how things are going within Alberta and the successes that Alberta has been demonstrating.

I'll leave it at that. Thank you so much.

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