Finance Committee on Oct. 6th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Allen first, please.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Mr. Chair, does that mean I'm going to get a full five-minute round or not? I was going to share—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Well, apparently you're sharing with Mr. Van Kesteren.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

I'm going to share it with Mr. Van Kesteren.

I have a quick question to ask Mr. Rogers.

I had a chance to meet with a couple of people, Allyson Giberson and Kelly Beveridge, in my riding in western New Brunswick, who are actually intervening in an eating disorder program. It was an interesting and very informative meeting that we had. I didn't personally realize some of the challenges. As you said, a lot of young women and girls tend to be the most impacted by this.

One of the things they talked about, and they're starting to get some numbers, are repeats, where young girls and women have to go back to the hospital—repeat visits, repeat visits, repeat visits. With their intervention, they're actually starting to cut that down.

When I was talking with Maureen O'Neil of the Canadian Foundation for Healthcare Improvement, I talked to her about how we can save money in our health care system, as opposed to necessarily just spending more money.

Has there been any work on this and do you have some of these cost-saving numbers that we could actually use to justify an investment in this?

[Bill Rogers]

There's limited data, to the best of my knowledge. I can ask some of the consultants and physicians who have been active in this if there are any. To the best of my knowledge there are not. However, there are places, like the London Health Sciences Centre in London, Ontario. It has a very large eating disorder program. Ontario has a $30-million program in various hospitals. When I've talked to the physicians there, mostly they're outreach programs, but they work. It gets people back onside. For example, my colleague here, Lauren, recovered. She had it when she was 18 and she recovered. It never leaves you, but now she knows how to deal with it. That's what the programs come down to: they allow you to go through your life without having to be an anorexic or a binge eater, or whatever.

I wish I had more data, but we will check and get back to the committee.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

I would appreciate that.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Mr. Van Kesteren.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

How many minutes do I have, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

There are about six and a half minutes for you and me, so....

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

All right. It really puts the pressure on.

I want to go to you, Grand Chief. I appreciate your coming down here, and I thank you for your words.

My colleague mentioned Indspire. Would you agree—and we're talking about the testimony of Mr. Kirby, too—that so many of the problems that you experience...? Your young people need jobs. There are some great opportunities for them. Wouldn't you agree that that is probably the greatest need that your young people have at this point?

[Chief Ghislain Picard]

Well, they also need to be prepared to take on jobs. To me, that's where education falls into place.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Ultimately so they can enter the workforce....

Maybe you can tell this committee if there's a way that you could help us. The testimony by Indspire...it was a great success story, but the problem is that most of the young people who are trained and graduate don't go into the private sector.

Could you help this committee and maybe just give some advice where the government might be able to enact something so that we can see more young people going into the private sector? We know there are so many opportunities for your people, especially up north in the mining areas.

[Chief Ghislain Picard]

I would say the reality is that if we were provided with more opportunities, that certainly would happen more in our communities. But the other reality is that we are also facing a situation where we have a lot of catching up to do.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

I realize that.

[Chief Ghislain Picard]

It certainly doesn't happen overnight. To us, being given the opportunity to provide quality education as it exists anywhere else in the country would be very key.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Essex, ON]

Maybe I'm not making myself clear. What I mean is that many of your young people who are graduating.... As a matter of fact, I heard that up to 85% are working in the community, which is a great thing. We're not discouraging working in the community. But there are so many opportunities, and great opportunities, that would help first nations people if they would go into the private sector, in those jobs. How can we encourage them to move into that sector as opposed to the other sector?

[Chief Ghislain Picard]

Our young people have that choice now. At the same time, it certainly would fall, I would say, under the objectives of this government to reinforce the governance in our communities as well. To me it also speaks to that objective for our first nations governments to reinforce their own governance structures.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Van Kesteren.

I have a number of questions. I'll try to get through some of them.

Ms. Hayashi, I want to start with you.

I enjoyed your presentation very much. In your submission, you talk about the support for the Networks of Centres of Excellence and the centres of excellence for commercialization and research. You talk about CIHR. Then you state:

There remains however, a key gap in our ability to translate this world-class research into its commercial potential, and realize the full extent of resulting economic and societal benefits.

I think that was probably a consensus around the time of this government's science and technology strategy back in 2007. You do hear from people, researchers and others, who say that somehow we've focused too much on commercialization of research at the expense of funding for basic research. I just wanted you to address this concern that some researchers are raising.

[Kathryn Hayashi]

There clearly always has to be a balance. There can be no later-stage projects if there is no early-stage research. Absolutely, there is an ecosystem of innovation in the health care system where you must have basic research, but hopefully, the best, most commercializable aspects of that basic research can be found, focused upon, and developed quickly, cost-effectively, through organizations like CDRD.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

In our first panel, Mr. Saxton asked some questions about ensuring that we focus health research dollars in a way so as to try to not create so many different pots of funds but ensure these groups collaborate. One of the concerns some people may raise is we fund a lot through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and the government should focus on funnelling money there.

In terms of funding commercialization, though, that's perhaps not the best vehicle. That's why we have things like the Networks of Centres of Excellence. It does lead to the question of ensuring that we're not just funding a thousand different pots and not actually getting commercialization or value for dollar, or the researchers who are working are not accessing enough funds to commercialize their research.

Is the Networks of Centres of Excellence the model for doing that? What's the best way for the government to—

[Kathryn Hayashi]

We've had a lot of success. It has been an excellent program for us to start with. We were one of the original cohorts of centres of excellence for commercialization and research. We were successfully renewed in that program, but we have outgrown those types of programs.

In the previous session there was a lot of discussion about how government, how we as Canada, can do this better. An organization such as CDRD, that has a national focus and is about bringing together the right people in the right regional centre.... For example, we don't want to build everything at CDRD. We need to leverage what has already been built and what has already been built successfully.

At Dalhousie we have our zebrafish node. The CDRD zebrafish node is a very interesting cutting-edge, global-leading centre. Basically, zebrafish are little transparent fish. You can see their insides. You can see, without killing the fish, how a drug is working, or you can just see them swimming around. You can do tests on them.

There is a researcher at Dalhousie who has a world-class zebrafish node. We have a relationship with him. We can use their resources, their expertise, so that researchers all across the country can benefit from that.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

From a policy point of view, is it better for the government, then, to fund a number of initiatives like yours across the country and pick them directly, or is it better to fund a program that's not the Networks of Centres of Excellence, but something in addition to that? Is it better to fund a program that funds organizations like yours, or is it better to directly fund right from the government?

[Kathryn Hayashi]

We think we've reached such a level that we are the national centre for drug development and commercialization. We have, over the past seven years, worked very hard to develop a national network. We feel that we have outgrown federal programs, and we really are now seeking a foundational funding that would allow us to operate through our next period to sort of build up to the critical mass of being able to deliver as a national resource.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You'd almost have, then, the government establishing those criteria which an organization such as yours would have to meet, and then it would move beyond the Networks of Centres of Excellence and then be funded directly.