I think the steps that have been taken, particularly with the FPT work that has been ongoing on concussions, are a really good first step. Getting all those national sports organizations, the NSOs, involved in this and buying into something.... It has to happen. They have to be the drivers of this. My concern is about the trickle-down from there and how effectively and efficiently that happens. What I've noticed in Ontario, from my perspective at least, is that the provincial sports organizations seem to have a better mechanism to get things down to the community level. Relying on national sports organizations may not be the best bet at this time, but they definitely have to buy in and at least monitor what their PSOs are doing and ensure that their PSOs are getting the messages out.
As far as the federal role is concerned, because of the jurisdictional divisions, I really do feel that having something in each province and territory is probably the best way to go. Having some kind of overarching 30,000-foot view, or whatever, from the federal government as to things they would like to see happen and encourage to happen would probably be a good idea, but I think we will probably get more bang for the buck if we actually get each province and territory on board, either with some kind of replica of the existing Rowan's Law or with something similar, however they may want to implement it at their own levels.
I see a federal government role—for example, public service announcements. If you're going to have a week, or if you're going to promote sport, have that as part of the sport promotion piece; have it as part of a health promotion piece; have a federal portal where people can get the best and brightest information on this. Support from the federal level into research, I think, really needs to happen. We're fortunate that Dr. Michael Strong from Western University is now at CIHR. He was a huge and very important advocate for work in the concussion area. I hope he will carry that over into his role at CIHR and we'll see increased funding in that area or better targeted funding.
We have an embarrassment of riches in Canada when it comes to research in this area. We punch way above our weight in the world in concussion research. We have such incredible people doing work here—the folks in Calgary, Western, Toronto, McGill, Laval. It's incredible what Canada is doing in this area. If you look at the attendance and the memberships on committees that were at the Berlin consensus conference, you'll see that Canada is in there well beyond what anyone would expect from a country of our size, at least population-wise. These people are doing incredible work and they need to be supported.
A telling factor is that the NFL recently made a huge grant to the people in Calgary to do some work. The fact that they got the second-biggest grant out of that from the NFL speaks volumes as to the quality of work that's being done here in Canada. It really needs to be supported, because there are so many unanswered questions, but we can be the leader on that. We are leaders in a lot of the areas now, and we can continue to be.