Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome to our witnesses.
We're having an interesting discussion here today and, of course, there are a number of “asks” on the table.
I'm going to start with you, Mr. Mann.
Like Mr. Brison, my mother also suffered from Alzheimer's and eventually succumbed to that disease. I suspect most of us around the table have a story that's very similar to that.
We know there's a growing and very real health threat, as I will call it, facing Canadians. Currently we have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 750,000 people living with dementia. That's expected to double by 2030, so that's over the next 15 years. Some of those folks will have dementia, and some will have Alzheimer's, and some will have other problems. They could be concussion-related. I don't know. I'm not going to speculate.
Your “ask” here would be for a national dementia plan of $150 million over five years, or $30 million annually. I'm going to be specific, but what I'm concerned about with that “ask”—and maybe Mr. Ireland could step in here as well—has to do with the coordination. I really believe we have to confront this issue head-on. We need to put something in place to do that. The question is how we coordinate that effort. Quite frankly, how do we get the best value for our dollar when we do that?