Thank you.
Yes, indeed, I think everybody in this room knows that 40% of people will have cancer in their lifetime. Most of us have family members on whom it has had a major impact. It is a huge issue for our country. Particularly within the issue of an aging society, if we want to ensure that people have an opportunity to contribute, then preventing them from getting chronic diseases is important public policy.
As far as the three aspects go—the investment and research, the transfer of that research into policy and practice, and then its impact on individuals—this is an area in which there has been some investment, though not nearly as great as that into the treating of diseases or the management of chronic illnesses, so we look at it as a real opportunity for Canada, particularly with an aging society, to say, “How can we invest in understanding what changes individual behaviour? What can be done to actually prevent diseases from occurring in the first place?”
We all know that we should be eating healthily, but what stops us? Why don't we eat healthily? Why is it that our children are eating so much and maybe not exercising? What is it in our infrastructure programs? What is it in our school systems? What are those things that are preventing us from doing the right thing?
We looked and saw that there wasn't actually that much research done into the actual practices that public policy could then take up and individuals could then use to empower themselves to make individual change. We think much more research needs to be done, not only into the hard sciences of prevention—for example, on how a certain chemical affects the biochemistry of the individual—but much more so into the sociological sides of research. What actually causes someone to change the actions they take? If that research is done, it's great, but what if it doesn't get translated? What if it doesn't make it into public policy?
We not only have to do the research but also have the commitment of governments to say that prevention is important, that we are going to learn, and that we are going to apply best practices from other jurisdictions.
I mentioned, for example, that in the United States the corporate sector has taken a tremendous leadership role in the provision of prevention at the workplace. That involves organized labour, it involves CEOs, it involves companies, and it involves government. We have to do the research to know what we should do. We have to translate it into policies and practice in governments and organizations such as business, but then we have to go to the next step, and that's working with charities.
We have tremendous reach into communities. We have a lot of people who come to us and say, “I want to do the right thing, but I just don't know what to do” or “If I'm going to do it, and push comes to shove, and it's Saturday night, and I don't know what I'm going to eat, I'm going to eat the easiest thing for me.” How do we get the information out to those individuals so that they make informed, intelligent choices? How do we empower them with the research that governments can support, that organizations such as charities can help get out to people, and that we can then measure the impact of at the community level?
We think there's a lot of room as far as an overall approach on prevention goes. There's actually a lot of ground to be gained.