Thank you very much.
When we heard of this opportunity, it was fortuitous, because our chamber had been pretty active in the area of health opportunities as an economic driver for the community in Saskatoon in the late 1990s through to the mid-2000s. The observation we had at the time related to an observation that if we as a community were based in the United States, and our chamber of commerce happened to be in Baltimore, we would be actively considering John Hopkins University as a key economic driver for our region.
We started to talk about how we could use that discipline in terms of creating economic opportunity in our region. For about six years, we were very active in holding a series of conferences and examining how we could foster economic opportunities, particularly in the area of innovation and the application of new technology, always within the context of the Canada Health Act.
So if we draw on some previous history of Saskatoon and draw ourselves back to 1951, when radiation treatment was first applied in a successful manner to treat cancer in Saskatoon, it was a remarkable achievement from very gifted researchers. If you were to call it a mistake...our community did not capture the opportunity that potentially represented in terms of constructing machines, developing training, systems, and support. So we've always used that as a bit of a litmus test for the nature of our work over the years. What's most interesting in terms of the work that we forwarded to your committee in preparation of this meeting is that unfortunately most of that work, which has largely been in a hiatus for some five to seven years, is largely still current.
One of the documents that we didn't forward to you was a document prepared by the most recently retired dean of the Rotman School of Management, Roger Martin. The title of his report, and I would encourage your committee to pull this for your own examination, is Where are the Exports? The Canadian Health Care Mystery. His observation at that time, and this was written in 2003, was that Canada was spending approximately $100 billion on health care every year, almost 12% of Canada's GDP, yet exports were less than $5 billion. What we discovered was that we are consumers of others' innovations.
So the work we did at that time was to look at behaviours in other markets, in Europe and in the United States. We had a really good trip to the northern part of Minneapolis in Minnesota, and observed the Mayo Clinic, which is a not-for-profit readily regarded as a global leader in terms of clinical investigation. What developed around that area was a cluster of medical innovation that was quite considerably in excess of anything that we could possibly imagine in any region anywhere in Canada, even though we would not classically regard Minneapolis, or Minnesota, as being a major innovation and research centre.
It was interesting to note that there were people there who were hard-wired to find market opportunities. We've continued to try to stimulate those opportunities in Saskatoon. If we think of the things that we've been able to gather over that time, we're surprised as to the fact that this is happening at a grassroots level, but there's no concerted effort that we can detect at the national level to encourage health care innovation as an economic driver.
So we have resurrected our activity over the last year, and have had two mini-conferences as it related to areas where we have identified significant strengths in Saskatoon. This would be at the clinician level. One is in the area of neurosurgery, particularly as it applies to brain and stroke. Another area that we're going to be doing a session on next week is related to lung health.
We are going to be holding a conference on March 12 and 13, 2013, again to resurrect this concept. If you think of the mandate that we have—and we will forward this to you—it is to educate and promote opportunities for heath care industry development, education, research and commercialization, and our role is to create the best business climate in Canada for Saskatoon and our region without infringing on the Canada Health Act.
The objective is to increase productivity in our health care system by reducing our reliance on imported medical goods and services and by developing new Canadian health care tools, therapies, technologies, products, and services.
Our observation has been that if you keep track in Canada, and most particularly the area that we're aware of in Saskatoon, there have been glimmers of innovation that have had potentially global impact. If you think back to the early example I used relating to radiation treatment, we did not take advantage of this as an economic development strategy, and we happen to believe that we're selling our country short.
If you start to think about the global health care industry—and people try to find predictable drivers into the future—it is very predictable that in the world people will constantly be in search of means by which they can improve the health care conditions for their communities, and therefore will always be looking to the globe for the best solutions available. Yet we as a country have continued to think more in terms of health care as a service and a cost centre rather than an economic opportunity.
That's the one suggestion we put to you as a committee: to consider how we can reframe our discussion around health care to think of it as an economic driver.
Thank you.