Finance Committee on Oct. 6th, 2014

[Michael Kirby, Founding Chairman, Partners for Mental Health]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

The clerk and I believe we have a way of showing you a short video, with 30 seconds in English and 30 seconds in French, and I'm going to take the first minute of my time to do this. Since I didn't bring my grandchildren to make sure it was going to work—

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Michael Kirby]

—I'm relying on the clerk to try it.

Go ahead, please.

It's on your iPads, as I understand it.

[Video Presentation]

Thank you for that. I thought it would set the scene for the rationale for my proposal.

As an aside, that particular public service announcement was played at no cost to Partners for Mental Health. Indeed, we got the actual making of the 30-second piece contributed. Last year we got a million dollars' worth of free publicity, according to the networks. The next PSA, in terms of frequency of play, got $100,000. That piece obviously touched a lot of people in the media and a lot of people who watched it.

Let me give you a couple of very simple facts about the issue of children and youth suicide.

First of all, it's the second leading cause of death of people between the ages of 15 and 24, second only to car crashes. Among first nations youth, it's four times—four times—the Canadian average. Canada has the third worst youth suicide percentage among all the industrialized nations of the world.

More importantly in many ways, three times more youth die by suicide than by all forms of cancer combined. To put it in perhaps a very graphic way, over 750 young people kill themselves each year, which is the size of a mid-sized high school. Visually, if you think of a mid-sized high school being totally wiped out, it gives you some indication of the size of the problem.

What I did was convene a team of experts from across the country under the chairmanship of Dr. Ian Manion, who is the executive director of the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health. We developed a research proposal. In the document, I've given you the summary of the methodology and so on. The fundamental thing to understand is that the methodology is to choose 25 communities cross the country, communities that will be geographically dispersed but also very culturally dispersed and different. Some will be first nations; some will be Inuit; some will be multicultural; some will be rural.

We need to understand what the characteristics of a community are in order to develop the best community-based way of dealing with the problem, because the one thing we absolutely know is that you cannot simply have a laying on of hands from the national level or provincial level and have a meaningful impact at the community level. It has to be community-based and it has to be essentially whole-community-based, in that it has to involve people from education, health, justice, child welfare, and families, and indeed, youth themselves.

What I anticipate as an outcome is not dissimilar to the kinds of outcomes I got from a similar cross-country study I did when I was running the Mental Health Commission, our study on the mentally ill homeless, where we determined what the most important characteristics of delivering mental health services to the homeless are, because we know that approximately 80% of homeless people have some element of a mental problem. We intend to have exactly the same kind of outcome, geared to a particular makeup of a community.

The final point is that we intend to do this with matching funds. I'm not interested in just getting federal money. We will get matching funds from provinces, from philanthropic organizations, from some private sector organizations, and so on. I've had enough conversations across the country now to say quite comfortably that we can raise that money, simply because everybody believes it's a paramount problem and we have to have an evidence-based approach to solving the problem.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to add one thing. Several senior members of the government have asked me to add on a component that will also look at the issue of military suicide. I'm in the process of doing that. The communities will be military units or bases. In a sense, we will expand from 25 communities to 30, with the other five being related to the military.

Mr. Chairman, my bottom line is that this government has been exceedingly kind to me. They asked me to put together the Mental Health Commission, and we ran that. They asked me to run the program on the homeless mentally ill. I'm now asking them to give me a chance to do one last very important thing, which is address the issue of youth suicide.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much for that presentation.

Colleagues, for the first round, the first four questioners will do seven-minute rounds. Then we'll move to five-minute rounds, because we do have at least one vote this evening.

Ms. Davies, for seven minutes, please.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Welcome to our witnesses.

I'm not usually on this committee. I'm the health critic for the NDP. I'm subbing in because there are a lot of health issues that are coming up today, and I want to focus on them.

In particular, I'd like to follow up with Grand Chief Picard. You raised a lot of issues, but I will focus on the issues having to do with health and wellness. Finally, after many years of advocacy and lobbying, there is now a joint study of the non-insured health benefits, which is a federal responsibility. It just started recently, after the AFN called for it for years. Could you give us an update as to how that's going or what you hope the outcomes will be?

Also, I'm very concerned to see the list of programs due to sunset in 2015. They're all critical programs. I can't imagine the anxiety it causes the organizations, worrying about whether they're going to be able to continue. Could you tell us a little more about the impact, should there not be any continued funding? I could name a couple. A major one is the aboriginal diabetes initiative, for example, which we heard about earlier.

I'd also like to ask Mr. Kirby a question, if there's a couple of minutes left.

Grand Chief, could you talk about the non-insured health benefits partnership?

[Chief Ghislain Picard]

On this issue we can follow up with the committee in terms of providing the information that you are requesting.

I want to take a few seconds to respond to the second part of your question. This is key in terms of our role before this committee and our numerous attempts over the last 10 years to adequately represent exactly what you're speaking about. If the cost of health care is rising in aboriginal communities it's because the costs of other programs stay the same—housing, education. All of that has an impact on the health sector.

We often find ourselves in this vicious cycle that is reflected in the last part of your question, which is what happens beyond 2015? That creates a lot of uncertainty in our own institutions and in our own first nations governments, not counting the tremendous turnaround in personnel. That also causes instability in many of the programs, which we don't need.

As I said earlier, we come and we respect. I don't want to be out of order but I need to say this: we respect the institutions of Parliament, but at the same time some of our people might not agree with this. We come to these committees and express what we feel about these totally disappointing programs in terms of their impact on our communities. We provide suggestions for change, but with little result. To me, this is what we take back to our leadership.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you. I understand and respect where you're coming from because it is about action and follow-up rather than empty promises. The NDP is going to be pushing this and making sure that those commitments are made.

I'll turn now to Mr. Kirby.

Suicide prevention is a huge issue in this country and it's good that there has been a fair amount of discussion in Parliament about this issue. We've had private members' bills and we've had sessions at the health committee.

I want to ask about the organization you head up, Partners for Mental Health. What is your record—not what you want to do, but what you've actually done—in terms of collaboration with other key partners?

I'm a bit surprised that you're here. I presume you're asking for federal funds. There are major players already doing this work, whether it's the Mental Health Commission of Canada, the Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health, Canadian Psychiatric Association, or the Canadian Psychological Association. It's not clear to me what your record of collaboration is.

I think it's very important that there not be duplication. The Mental Health Commission of Canada, which you were involved with, has a very significant ask in terms of continuing its work right across the country. I know that suicide prevention is very much a part of its agenda. What is your collaboration there?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

A brief response, please.

[Michael Kirby]

Partners for Mental Health has been going for about a year and a half. Our intent was, and still is, to build the kind of social movement that exists with breast cancer. We've already recruited 70,000 members and that number is growing.

None of the organizations you mentioned are doing anything on the ground to figure out how to make changes at the community level. They're doing lots of what I would call paper work—

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

I'm very surprised to hear that. I've met with them and I don't agree with you.

[Michael Kirby]

They are not doing the kind of empirical work on the ground that is required to ultimately make a difference. I've always been—

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

What's your level of collaboration with them? What have you actually done to collaborate with those organizations?

[Michael Kirby]

At this point we haven't had anything to collaborate on with them because I've been out building a social movement. None of them are into the business of building a social movement. We're the only people doing aggressive social marketing, so there hasn't been anything.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

What are you actually asking of the federal government in terms of financial support?

[Michael Kirby]

I'm asking the federal government to do as it did with the homeless mentally ill. They contributed $100 million over five years to run projects in 25 different communities targeted specifically at finding out what really works, not theoretically, but in fact in practice.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Ms. Davies.

We'll go to Mr. Saxton, please.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thanks to our witnesses for being here today.

My first questions will be for the Centre for Drug Research and Development.

Ms. Hayashi, as you know, I recently had the opportunity to visit your very impressive facilities at the University of British Columbia and to see first-hand the work that you're doing there. Perhaps you could share with the committee some of the successes that CDRD has had to date, and how CDRD is going to help Canada become a world leader in drug research.

[Kathryn Hayashi]

We've had quite a good record so far. We are a relatively new organization. We were initially funded in 2007 by the Province of B.C. and spent the first couple of years building labs and building up our team. Since then, we have a couple of spin-out companies. One is called Sitka Biopharma. They are working on a platform technology, but their initial application is for bladder cancer. There has not been a new treatment for bladder cancer in 30 years. It's the most expensive cancer to treat per patient over a lifetime because it's a recurring cancer that comes back and comes back. This could be a new treatment paradigm for bladder cancer, with one treatment resolving the disease enough that it wouldn't recur. That's one of the things. The platform also has other applications. It could also be used in prostate, or other sorts of vesicle-type cancers.

We also have a company called Kairos Therapeutics, which is an antibody-drug conjugate platform. It's a very exciting technology, very high interest from the investor community, spearheaded by a man called John Babcook, who left a very good job at a very large company to lead the initiatives of starting a company that he wants to see as the next Genentech in Canada. He wants it to be a successful company that runs, is not acquired, and creates jobs and prosperity for Canada.

He's had a high level of interest from angel investors and venture capital investors, so we'll see how that progresses. It's a cutting-edge platform of biologics that was initially funded through a grant from Western Economic Diversification Canada to bring him aboard with a few staff and some start-up equipment. We're at a point now where we have a very exciting new company on board.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

In addition to research and development, you're also focused on incubation as well as commercialization of [Inaudible—Editor]. Is that correct?

[Kathryn Hayashi]

That's correct.

We've kind of figured this out over the past several years of operating. We have a search team of very experienced scientists with industry focus who go to our partner institutions across Canada. All of the health research institutions are part of our network in Canada. They travel to Memorial University, Dalhousie, and all across the country. They look at projects, speak to investigators, and try to figure out whether there's a commercially promising piece of research that they're working on, and develop a project plan. Once we have a project plan, we pull in, and they all take a look at the plans and figure out which projects they wish to fund.

Right from the very beginning, we have external validation in terms of independent review of the science, and also some indication that there's some market pull, that there's some real interest in this technology as an investable and developable drug.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

You've asked for $153 million over seven years, roughly $22 million a year. How do you intend to invest that money?

[Kathryn Hayashi]

Actually, it's only $140 million.

It's really to leverage what we've already started, but really to establish CDRD firmly as a national organization with an expanded search team that we can really have people on the ground all across the country, and also to really invest in some of the projects.

Drug development is a very time-consuming and complicated process. You have to expect a lot of attrition. It's science and sometimes the experiments don't work out. You need a lot of shots on goal to find the successes that will provide not only the economic success at the time but the self-sustaining aspect, which we built into our model right from the beginning. We realized that, at the start-up period, if we can invest in technologies, then hopefully there will be a couple of home runs in there that will fund our continued operations after a start-up period.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you very much.

My next question is for the National Initiative for Eating Disorders.

In your submission you propose a ministerial advisory committee. What role would a ministerial advisory committee potentially play in drafting and implementing a national strategy on eating disorders?

[Bill Rogers]

That's a good question.

As a small organization, or relatively new one, we recognize that any funding for this research should fall under some sort of federal organization to oversee it. In going out into the marketplace, we believe we have two things that have to be done. First of all, we have to look at all the data that has been collected—there's been a bunch of little studies here and there—and determine how to get at that data. A national organization undertaking this will have much easier access in terms of obtaining that data and will be able to manage the funds.

We don't propose to do this ourselves. We're not set up do it. It's not what we want to do. What we see is that we need one of these organizations to take this on so that the data becomes available nationally, to the provincial governments and the federal government, and we can start building an action plan to move this forward.