Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone.
And welcome back, Madam Chair.
I appreciate the opportunity to meet with the committee to discuss the 2011 main estimates.
Joining me today are Glenda Yeates, deputy minister for Health Canada; Dr. David Butler-Jones, chief public health officer for the Public Health Agency of Canada; Dr. Beaudet, president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research; Daniele Dionne, vice-president of the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission—boy, that's a long title—Mary Lindberg, chairperson of the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board; and joining us via teleconference is Dr. Elinor Wilson, president of Assisted Human Reproduction Canada.
We welcome the opportunity to talk about the broad goals of the health portfolio and the specific steps we are taking to keep Canadians healthy and safe. As the committee knows, the system depends upon the collaboration among many partners, including the provinces and the territories who deliver health care.
In the main estimates for the year ahead, our government will provide $3.34 billion to help maintain and improve health. Of course, the main estimates do not include the important health initiatives of Budget 2011 that are paving the road forward for better health for all Canadians. Those initiatives include an allocation of $100 million to help establish the Canada Brain Research Fund to support Canadian neuroscience. Research will lead to better methods of diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders.
Budget 2011 also provides for an investment of $4 million over three years to support the construction of a cyclotron for the production of medical isotopes.
There is also $15 million per year in additional funding to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and $200 million in renewed funding over two years for the chemicals management plan.
We look forward to continuing our work to improve access to quality health services through the provinces and the territories for the delivery of health care. We have also introduced and passed the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, which will improve the safety of consumer products, and we are working to implement that now.
Our Conservative government takes the health and safety of Canadians very seriously. We strive to keep Canadians healthy and safe and to make sure that our health systems are sustainable. We support Canadians through education, through legislation and targeted programs—mostly in partnership with the provinces and the territories who deliver health care—national organizations, and first nations and Inuit communities.
We also protect Canadians by ensuring the safety and quality of the food we buy, the toys our children play with, or the medicines we take.
We not only want Canadians to kick the deadly habit of smoking, but are working hard to prevent young Canadians from starting to smoke in the first place.
We want to protect our families and communities against a loss of human potential that comes with illegal drugs.
Our government is updating our safety regulations and legislation in order to protect children against allergens and potentially harmful chemicals. Canada is a world leader in protecting its citizens from industrial chemicals. We are transforming the way we provide Canadians with the information they need to make healthy choices.
Madam Chair, in our efforts to keep Canadians healthy, we are looking for a better balance between prevention and treatment. Prevention begins with credible, useful, and relevant information. Health Canada communication tools are employed strategically to help Canadians make informed health, nutritional, and safety choices for themselves and their families.
We have also taken important steps towards prevention in some of the most important health issues that Canadians face today. We continue to work closely with the provinces and the territories.
Last year, my provincial and territorial colleagues and I endorsed a declaration that sets a foundation for working with stakeholders within and outside health systems to improve public health. We will focus our efforts where they are most needed; for example, the funding that will help establish the Canada Brain Research Fund, increasing Canadian research capacity. This will benefit the health and quality of life of Canadians who suffer from neurological disorders.
With regard to first nations and Inuit communities, our objective is to reduce the gaps in health outcomes among first nations and Inuit and the Canadian population in general.
My department has introduced initiatives recently that will have a lasting impact in those communities. This work was supported by $730 million over five years as part of Budget 2010 for key programs such as the aboriginal diabetes initiative, maternal child health, and others.
I have been working for a number of years now on ways to provide healthier food choices to northern communities in a more efficient way. The result is our government's nutrition north program. This program will bring healthy fresh and frozen foods to isolated northern communities. We want to ensure that we are helping communities better their knowledge of healthy eating and allow them to develop skills for selecting and preparing healthy store-bought and traditional country foods.
Year in and year out my department provides a wide variety of health services to more than 600 isolated first nations communities, and this includes support from more than 900 nurses who live and work in these communities, programs that promote healthy living, disease prevention, as well as drug, dental, and other health benefits to more than 830,000 people.
An area where our government's actions will have enormous benefits down the road is in childhood obesity. As the committee is aware, we need to find ways to prevent childhood obesity. The number of overweight children is growing, and today one in four children is carrying excess weight.
Three weeks ago I made an announcement to begin a national dialogue on ways to help children maintain healthy weights. We will conduct face-to-face meetings with individuals and organizations as well as through interactive websites. Our website is called Our Health Our Future, and it invites Canadians to share their ideas on ways to improve our overall healthy weight. We will incorporate these thoughts into a national summit on obesity that will be hosted later this year.
The Public Health Agency of Canada and other partners are also addressing child and youth obesity by looking at maximizing availability of nutritious foods. As a mother of a young boy, I know all too well how marketing to children of foods and beverages high in sugar, fat, and sodium needs to be reduced. I believe we should encourage kids to be more active year-round, both indoors and outdoors. Chronic diseases have such a devastating impact on Canadians and their families. Cancer, for example, claims the lives of 75,000 Canadians every year. We can prevent one-third of all cases of breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and esophageal cancer through a healthy diet, regular exercise, and maintaining a healthy weight. We can prevent another one-third of cancers by avoiding smoking and exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke.
With this in mind, I was pleased to accompany our Prime Minister a few weeks ago to announce our investment of $250 million over five years, which will go towards a Canadian strategy for cancer control implemented by the partnership. This is an important step in keeping Canadians healthy. This partnership has brought a coalition to the fight against cancer and has helped provide more effective cancer prevention and control. It has also taken the lead in a study that will track over 300,000 Canadians over their lifetime so that we can learn about how genetics, the environment, and an individual's lifestyle contribute to cancer. We need to continue with both cancer prevention and treatment. Last year the Canadian Institutes of Health Research provided $159 million in funding for cancer research.
Madam Chair, there are other chronic diseases that we have also prioritized. Our government has invested $8 million annually to the Canadian diabetes strategy and $55 million annually in the aboriginal diabetes initiative. This initiative provides more than 600 first nations and Inuit communities with access to diabetes prevention and health promotion activities.
We have also invested more than $500 million since 2005 in research into heart disease through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. This funding supports a wide range of research projects aimed at the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of heart disease. CIHR also works with partners across Canada, including the Heart and Stroke Foundation, to identify research priorities and support research funding and training programs.
I have spent a substantial amount of time on neurological health this year. Research is crucial for the understanding and advancement in the treatment of neurological diseases. That is why we have embarked on a four-year, $15 million national population health study on neurological conditions, which will provide a better picture of the state of neurological diseases in Canada.
An integral part of keeping Canadians healthy is keeping them safe. The issue of safety was raised in a dramatic way in recent weeks because of events in Japan. That country has suffered incalculable losses and immeasurable pain and suffering. Our hearts go out to the people of Japan. The damage done to the nuclear reactor during the earthquake and the tsunami have caused concerns about the potential for radiation travelling across the Pacific. While we are monitoring radiation levels through 100 stations across the country, we are confident there will be no health risks to Canadians. Nonetheless, we will continue working with other federal departments and with international partners to monitor the radiation coming from Japan.
We have been working hard to ensure the safety and security of Canadians by strengthening and updating our legislative and regulatory tools, and Canadians also need proper information to make smart decisions. Madam Chair, I was very proud when our Canada Consumer Product Safety Act was passed last December. This was much needed legislation and the first update to our consumer protection legislation in more than 40 years. Now we have the authority to order the mandatory recalls of dangerous products and force businesses to take dangerous products off the shelves. The result, I hope, will be increased confidence among consumers with respect to the goods they purchase for their families in the marketplace.
Madam Chair, part of our role in keeping Canadians safe is to provide the kind of information that helps Canadians make smart choices, such as the decision not to smoke. New health warnings will cover three-quarters of the front and back of cigarette and small cigar packages. This important work will build on our government's success in passing the Cracking Down on Tobacco Marketing Aimed at Youth Act, which became law in 2009. This act protects young people from tobacco marketing practices and encourages them not to start smoking in the first place.
Choices such as the decision not to indulge in illegal drugs.... Our successful drugsnot4me campaign is an integral part of the national anti-drug strategy.
Choices made, Madam Chair, to buy products that promote health and safety.... In partnership with Food and Consumer Products of Canada, we have launched a campaign to help consumers make sense of nutrition information labels on prepackaged food. This campaign helps consumers to better understand and use the nutrition fact table, in particular the percentage daily value.
Keeping our children safe is also important. The children's health and safety campaign integrates marketing, public opinion research, and traditional and news media to provide Canadians with information they need to deal with preventable health and safety risks to children. The campaign focuses on issues that were identified as important to parents, including food safety, crib safety, car safety, bullying, and obesity.
Speaking of food safety, Canada's health ministers have signed a foodborne illness outbreak response protocol that manages how governments work together in the event of a national or international foodborne outbreak. In our government's efforts to provide more precise information, a communication protocol has been developed with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Work is done with a national network of federal-provincial labs to use DNA fingerprinting to trace bacterial infections.
As committee members know, responsibility for the delivery of health care remains with the provinces and the territories. They're in the best place to know and respond to the health needs of their residents in their jurisdictions. Our government will continue to work with them and with other partners in the health care system to ensure there is a sustainable health care system in place for all Canadians. I am pleased that we can count on the many partners to respond to the health needs of Canadians.
An example of this is the Canada Health Infoway. Infoway is an independent organization funded by our government to work with the provinces and territories to develop electronic health systems that will translate into faster and safer management of patient information and will improve the efficiency, safety, and accessibility of the Canadian health care system.
As members of this committee are aware, we continue to work hard to provide access to medical professionals throughout the country, and I'm very proud of our recent announcements of funding that will support the training of more than 100 medical residents to work in Canada's rural and remote communities.
Budget 2011 also has provisions to forgive student loans of up to $40,000 for doctors who choose to practice in rural and remote areas and up to $20,000 for nurses who do the same. We know our efforts to improve access to medical professionals are having a positive effect on patient wait times. Earlier this week the Canadian Institute for Health Information released a progress report showing that at least eight out of ten Canadian patients are receiving priority procedures within medically acceptable wait times.
We want to maintain Canada's place among countries that have the healthiest population in the world. I believe we have set the priorities and have the initiatives in place that will enable us to meet that objective.
Earlier in the new year, I was pleased to receive the Senate review of H1N1. This detailed and objective report provided several suggestions that will be used to improve our pandemic response plan. As a result, once Parliament resumed, I sent a letter to the Senate committee co-chairs requesting that they undertake the statutory review of the 2004 health accord and report accordingly. I understand there are members of this committee who also expressed interest in conducting a similar review in this committee, and my parliamentary secretary has tabled a motion for your consideration that will facilitate this if voted on favourably.
I look forward to the members' comments, and I welcome the committee's questions.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
