Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. During my 5 minutes, I would like to leave you with two key messages:
Let me give you examples of what I'm talking about. First, building a globally competitive economy for the 21st Century. CIHR has funded the research of Dr. Terry Snutch of the UBC for the past 11 years. Dr. Snutch is interested in how the electrical activity in our brain works, fundamental research that is long-term but key to not just understanding our brain, but also understanding Parkinson's disease, chronic pain and other neurological conditions. But the work is so long term and so fundamental that industry would never fund such research. Dr. Snutch succeeded in identifying one of the first genes involved in acting as a gate or switch of the electrical activity in the brain.
With that discovery, he set up a small spin-off company called Neuromed whose business plan is to find new drugs that will alter the activity of this electrical gate. So, the research that CIHR funded for 11 years was handed off to the private sector who were prepared to invest $5-10 million in Neuromed.
But the story doesn't stop there. The research at Neuromed has gone so well, that Merck announced in June that they would invest close to half a billion dollars in Neuromed to develop new drugs against pain, Alzheimer's Disease, and other neurological conditions. That investment, the largest in Canadian biotech history, is an example of the partnership between the Federal Government - through CIHR - and industry.
Governments fund the long term fundamental research that industry would never support. And industry then comes in and starts to fund the next steps of the project. This is a win-win for Canada - jobs and the promise of new treatments against serious diseases and conditions.
Now my second point - lowering health care costs, increasing productivity and new kinds of partnerships.
Let me give you two examples of what we are doing. As noted in the Kirby-Keon Report on Mental Health, mental disability accounts for between 30-40% of disability claims in the workplace, translating into $33 billion lost annually in productivity in Canada. To address this issue, CIHR's Institutes of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction and its partners have created an initiative on Mental Health and the Workplace. New health research teams from across Canada are now working with workplace organizations to create a knowledge base, and develop policy and interventions to improve the quality of life in the workplace. Our partners in this initiative include the Canadian Labour Congress, the Institut de recherche Robert-Sauvé en santé et sécurité au travail, and the Ontario Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. New initiatives, new types of research teams, new partners.
Another example: more than two million Canadians have diabetes. By the end of the decade, this number is expected to rise to three million. A person with diabetes incurs medical costs that are two to three times higher than that of a person without diabetes. Just last week, CIHR-funded researchers Drs. Hertzel Gerstein and Salim Yusuf from McMaster University, announced that their international clinical trial found the drug Rosiglitazone reduced the chance of getting diabetes by 60 per cent. The results offer hope for new strategies for preventing and delaying the onset of diabetes and its devastating complications. This trial was co-funded by 3 drug companies and CIHR.
So to conclude, the examples I have given you are meant to illustrate what CIHR stands for:
Everything we know about knowledge-based economies, global competitiveness, productivity and health, tells us that investments in research, particularly health research, are one of the wisest, efficient, and most prudent investments any society can make.
Other countries recognize this too. The U.S., France, Germany, the U.K., Australia, South Korea, Japan and now India and China, are not standing still. Their investments in health research over the past 5 years and planned investments for the next 5 years, all equal or surpass Canada's.
Nonetheless, CIHR has become a model for the world. In fact, the U.K. Government has recently consulted with CIHR to help with a merger of the National Health Service R&D program and the MRC-UK into a single research council. We should be proud that CIHR's innovative model for health research is being noticed.
I firmly believe that the initiatives I have highlighted today will lead to a more productive Canada, a healthier Canada, a more efficient health care system, and a stronger economy. CIHR's success to date could not have happened without the sustained support of the Government of Canada. Now, I ask you to build on that foundation.
