Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm here with my colleague Sheila Robinson, representing the Gairdner Foundation.
ln its February 26 budget, the Government of Canada announced an allocation of $20 million to endow the Gairdner International Awards. Beginning in 2009 the awards will be renamed the Canada Gairdner International Awards. An agreement was signed between the foundation and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
The purpose of the allocation is twofold.
The first purpose is to increase the value of the Gairdner awards to $100,000 each in keeping with their stature and with international competition. They have fallen behind, and awards are always recognized and identified with their country of origin, as are the Gairdners. The last time the prizes received an increase was in 1984, at $30,000, which is about the $100,000 value today.
Second, we are going to establish for the first time an individual award for global health, the Canada Gairdner Global Health Award, which will be the most prestigious in the world in this field. It will be directed at international scientists for discoveries or major advances in preventing and treating diseases in the developing world.
The Gairdner awards are a national asset. They're Canada's only globally known and respected international prize of any kind. Gairdner is the only national organization that consistently brings the world's best biomedical researchers to Canada to share their ideas and work with scientists across the country. It epitomizes the knowledge advantage. Canada has built a strong research foundation. Industry Canada wants to put in place programs that will inspire Canadians to perform at world-class levels of scientific excellence. The Gairdners are a perfect example of such a program.
Let me give you two discoveries that have led to enormous economic impact, both by honourees of the Gairdner Foundation. The whole current biotech industry rests on discoveries, from the double helix through current discoveries like the microRNAs being honoured this year. Dr. Bruce Chown of Winnipeg in the sixties developed a treatment for Rh-negative disease, which killed babies born with life-threatening anemia. A spin-off is that Calgene is now Canada's most profitable biotech company.
Advantage Canada is committed to world-leading basic and applied research. Gairdner recognizes, encourages, and celebrates such research, and in doing so fosters a culture of innovation in Canada. Who else in Canada provides a realistic and unbiased benchmark for Canada's leading scientists in comparison with the world's leading biomedical scientists? Bringing the best international scientists to meet and share their work with Canadians is what we do every year. Because biomedical research is international and global, it's important that we have such a set of awards. Gairdner does this through its national program and by its prestigious medical advisory board. Gairdner winners have also become involved every year in the scientific community, bringing the most recent knowledge to the fingertips of our scientists and graduate students.
The experience of the Gairdner Foundation could also act as a model to the development of other international science awards synergistic with Canada's overall science and technology strategies and priorities, using similar arm's-length adjudication procedures.
James Arthur Gairdner started the foundation 48 years ago to reward international scientists for discoveries. An external measure of that stature is that of the 293 individuals from 13 countries, including 42 Canadians, who have received Gairdner awards, 70 have later won the Nobel Prize. Even more remarkable is that in the past six years, 11 of the 14 Nobel prizes in medicine have gone to former Gairdner awardees. Paul Nurse, the president of Rockefeller University, a Gairdner-Nobel laureate, said, “The Gairdner [award] is one of the world's greatest biomedical research prizes.... Where it leads others follow, including the Nobel committees in Stockholm.”
The core mandate of the foundation is to select annual Gairdner international awardees. It has a respected two-stage jury system, which involves a Canadian medical review panel with members from coast to coast. The second stage involves the medical advisory board, which is half international, half Canadian, and has on it five Nobel laureates and prestigious representatives from international institutions.
We not only give the prizes, but we have a national program that extends from Vancouver to St. John's every year in October. We have student outreach programs to senior high school students in order to inspire them into science and professional careers. We speak to the public so that there's a major interaction at all levels with Canadian citizenry.
We are now also on the verge of introducing a global health prize. Canada has a significant international reputation in the global health field. No individual prize exists, and this allows a platform to be built within Canada and, we believe, within this city that will platform and highlight global health advances in communicable diseases and population health and in the environmental health issue.
Recently our board has changed from a family to a public board and has representatives on it from Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, and British Columbia, and we are developing many new partnerships.
The future. The awards will continue the successful rigorous selection process, and we will not alter that value, which has served us well. Second, we will embark on a fundraising campaign from the provinces and from the private sector to add to the costs related to our foundation. The government grant provides the endowment for the prizes, but we need to carry out our programs or events and our professional activities. We are glad to say that the Government of Alberta has already contributed $2 million in this direction, and we hope other provinces will follow. Every year $700,000 is raised from corporations and institutions across the land.
Finally, we believe the Global Health Award will be a new platform for Canada in the international health field. So we look forward to a future, especially next year when we will celebrate our 50th anniversary with major events across the country dealing with cancer, with commercialization, with innovation, with childhood diseases, and other aspects. It may be the most spectacular year in health sciences that this country has ever had.
We believe strongly that the support of the Gairdner Foundation is of value to every Canadian in terms of development of science culture, science literacy in Canada, and the development of skilled personnel in the life sciences and health research and professions. We believe that we'll increase public awareness and stimulate the highest levels of international excellence in research.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.