Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning. My name is Ron Worton, and I'm chair of Research Canada: An Alliance for Health Discovery. I'm also the CEO and scientific director of the Ottawa Health Research Institute at the University of Ottawa.
It's a pleasure to be here to speak to you on the important role that health research plays in Canada.
Research Canada is a not-for-profit national voluntary organization whose mission is to help Canadians maintain and improve their health by ensuring that Canada is a world leader in health research. Our membership is drawn from all sectors dedicated to advancing health research, including the leading health research institutes, national health charities, hospitals, regional health authorities, universities, private industry, and others.
Research and development is a measure of a country's economic prosperity, and health research holds the key to improved health for all Canadians. The health research enterprise in Canada maintains and improves the health of our citizens through new products and services for better health care; keeps our publicly funded health care system affordable, efficient, and leading-edge; trains highly skilled individuals who in turn will directly contribute to the national economy in the future; and creates high-quality value-added employment opportunities, both directly and through the creation of spinoff companies, from the commercialization of research discoveries.
I want to amplify these points with just two examples, both taken from my own experience. The first example has to do with new products and services.
About ten years ago, one of the University of Ottawa researchers discovered that tiny bits of DNA would stimulate an immune response. Over the next five years she developed this into products that enhanced the response to vaccines. Our research institute worked with her to create Coley Pharmaceutical, with research labs and a staff of 40 researchers, on Terry Fox Drive in Kanata. The company has labs and offices in the U.S. and Germany and has major contracts with four drug companies to develop vaccine enhancers. These contracts are valued at over $900 million.
Research also saves money for the Canadian health care system. My second example deals with this.
An emergency room physician at Ottawa Hospital questioned why every person who limped into emergency with a swollen ankle was sent for an X-ray to see if it was broken. He developed a set of clinical tests to determine if the ankle really needed an X-ray. The Ottawa ankle rules are known all over the world now, posted on emergency room walls everywhere, in 39 languages. Following these rules and others that he developed--dealing with CT scan for head trauma, X-rays for back injury, and so on--eliminates 50% of all X-rays and CT scans in the country, saving tens of millions of dollars annually.
Further evidence that research can actually save money for the health care system is found in a working paper from the U.S. National Bureau of Economic Research, showing that for each additional $1 spent on new medicines, the estimated savings in hospitals is $4.44.
In addition to better health care and a stronger economy, health research in our universities and research institutes provides the training ground for Canada's next generation of researchers, in both academia and industry, a fact well recognized by the business community.
Finally, research to enhance our health care system contributes directly to our ability to attract and retain manufacturing and other jobs. One example is the recent decision by Toyota to build a second automotive plant in Ontario due to the quality of the workforce and the cost savings associated with our publicly funded health care system.
As we said in our brief to this committee, health research in Canada is strong. The investment by the federal government over the last six or seven years is paying off, with new infrastructure funded through the CFI and more highly skilled scientists attracted to Canada to occupy positions as Canada research chairs. The transformation of the Medical Research Council into the Canadian Institutes of Health Research was also a positive step, focusing research on health instead of illness.
Now is the time to take all of these gains from over the last seven years and develop a national plan, to ensure that the momentum is sustained as we move forward into the knowledge-based economy. Research Canada recognizes three critical elements to ensure this sustained growth.
The first element is additional funding for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, to ensure that the CIHR is able to provide project funding for the expanded research community. In recent years its funding envelope has not been sufficient to keep up with all the new Canada research chairs and other recruits to the country who are occupying all of the new space created by CFI. We're out of balance, and this needs to be corrected.
The second recommendation is continued funding for the CFI to ensure we maintain our leading-edge infrastructure.
The third is specific tax incentives to encourage more private sector investment in research.
These three recommendations are spelled out clearly in our brief, and I won't repeat them here.