Evidence of meeting #77 for Health in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was industry.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Wladyslaw Lizon Conservative Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON
Therefore, I can assume that if we did the work on those 20,000 genes and had all the information and all the correlation between the genes, it would be possible down the road.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Genome Canada
Yes. Once again, for multi-genetic things, it's very tricky because for the eye, when it works, you can inject the gene into certain tissues in the eye. To change every gene, in everyone's body, in every cell in everybody's body.... That's very tricky.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
Actually, that's reassuring in a sense.
Dr. Fry, you have another chance.
Liberal
Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC
Thank you
I was just saying we talk about genetic engineering, let's talk about genomic engineering. You're creating whole new human beings out of ones who are not deemed to be healthy enough. It's science fiction stuff.
Everything you're talking about is really important. The question is, where do we go from here in Canada? Dr. Edwards has talked about and set up this group that we're talking about, but I believe that Canada can do more, as a federal government, in terms of helping with that private-public academic partnership after the tripartite thing, in which we take academia working with not just pharma but with all parts of industry to be able to create the sort of commercialization of a product or of something new. I know when this was done about six or eight years ago the total amount that was there, private and public contributions, became about $10 billion. If you wanted to build this again, do you think this is enough to really kick-start a major trend in Canada of getting back up to where it used to be in terms of R and D in the G-8, which was number one? Now we've fallen to number seven again.
The point is, how do we move forward with that? What are the real implementation steps? Let us imagine you were the government. Take a risk here. What would you do?
Director and Chief Executive Officer, Structural Genomics Consortium
I agree with the statement before that industry doesn't spend money willy-nilly and they do due diligence before they spend. So if we lower the bars to public matching of industry funds, provided it's for the public good and in a pretty competitive way, if we created a pool of funds where every professor had a hunting licence to go out to a company and say, “You give me $10 million for the University of Alberta, and the government will match it, and it has to be shared among everybody”, if entrepreneurial professors had that opportunity to go out to the business world and say, “Come to Canada, spend your money here, the Canadian government will match it with very little peer review in nine months, and we'll wait”, I think we can be nimble and get a hell of a lot of private sector funding. We have excellent organizations that know how to administer this, but the fewer rules to matching with industry, the more industry-relevant research we've done, the more inward investment we'll get, in my opinion, in all sectors, not just health.
Director and Chief Executive Officer, Structural Genomics Consortium
Absolutely...oil and gas, environment.
Liberal
Liberal
Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC
I'm going to come back to a question I asked earlier on. You said there was one criteria set that said, what is this going to cost and what is the public benefit cost for changing the way we deal with health care? I am still very concerned that it might cost more than traditional ways of treating disease. It could cost more in terms of dollars and cents, not in terms of long-term health care. What kinds of costs would you see as we replace traditional ways of treatment and move into this new type of treatment? Has any kind of cost-benefit analysis been done at all?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Genome Canada
Yes. These are being done by health economists. In fact, we have insisted that each project in the personalized health competition has integrated into the project team a professional health economist to do that work. There are a lot of studies. It's very different whether you're talking about neurodegenerative disease or cancer. It will be very much case by case, but all of those studies are done.
I'm convinced that we will see a very clear demonstration of real value to the health system. If we can't demonstrate it for a particular topic, we won't do it. I don't think the health system can afford to just bring stuff on where we're not absolutely sure there will be value. We will start with the kinds of no-brainer things and then we will adjust going forward, and as soon as we see 10 different demonstrations of this value, then the payer, the health authorities, will begin to pull this technology more proactively.
Liberal
Hedy Fry Liberal Vancouver Centre, BC
I just wanted to ask if we could share the list of those health economists because we're doing a study on—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
Oh, could you share that and send it to the clerk, Dr. Edwards, and then we'll distribute it?
Director and Chief Executive Officer, Structural Genomics Consortium
I can, for sure.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
Thank you, Dr. Fry, for your good questions.
They've given me a question because it's our slot now, so I have full time.
Thank you so much to my side of the committee for doing that. We're all on the same side, but my side of the House, I should say.
We have 20,000 genes, you told us today. You told us that scientists fondle their problems, meaning that they fondle all the specialized genes that they love to be competitive with, so you have only a very small part of that picture, right? Now you've put in an infrastructure that seems to me to be very exciting, and it seems to spread out a lot of things.
I've heard you talk about two variables today: prevention and stopping certain diseases based on genetic makeup. You mentioned two cancers, type 2 diabetes, neurological disease to some extent. Having said that, with this infrastructure you have a huge problem-solving dilemma in some respects. We're all very excited about what we've heard today, and I've loved to hear that Canada is on the cutting edge and a leader because I believe we have the smartest people in the world here, and it's been greatly underrated. But Canada is taking this leadership, and thanks to you people for doing that.
I love your idea about industry being a partner because that's reality. We have an aging demographic and we can't keep up, no matter what anybody says. There's not enough money in any government pot under any party for any reason to keep up with everything we need to keep up with, so we're thinking outside the box. This particular study emphasizes thinking outside the box. That's why we're doing technological innovation.
Having said that right here today, could you tell me what the first emphasis of your work is? Is it prevention or is it curing diseases or do you have a 50-50 split? Can you do that, based on the fact that you can't be all things to all people, can you, doctor, right? So could you please share with the committee where your major spotlight is, your major focus.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Genome Canada
The process we went through to choose some of the projects—because you're totally right, we can't do everything—is that we allowed projects that were across the spectrum from prevention, early detection, treatment. We didn't say we're going to focus here, we're going to focus there. We took all comers. In terms of the evaluation criteria, where we did say the bar will be extremely high...you get buy-in from health authorities, from the clinicians. With the economic rationale, we will base our choice of projects on not only the great science and clinical need, but on that as well. So we haven't said we're only going to concentrate on cancer or neurodegenerative work. We've taken the best possible elements, the best possible demonstrations from any field, that are really focused on being able to deliver some value to the health system in the relatively short term.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
Thank you.
I'm going to go to Dr. Edwards because I'm running out of time.
Dr. Edwards, is there any program or initiative that is going to build your field of dreams and be able to pass on the entrepreneurial spirit to other scientists who are traditionally fondling the problems, as you put it, because you're so truthful and it's so real. Very brilliant, wonderful people are not reaching their full potential because they don't think outside the box. Are you putting something in play that will help that?
Director and Chief Executive Officer, Structural Genomics Consortium
I don't think scientists are inherently risk-averse. I think that the system in place to enable them to go into the unknown works against innovation.
Director and Chief Executive Officer, Structural Genomics Consortium
I think that if the government in Canada wanted to attract the foreign pharma investment to help knowledge, it could create some sort of program through CIHR or Genome Canada where it says this is money for matching, there are hardly any barriers to funding. If industry funds in our universities and it's knowledge generation, we're there matching and a magnet.
I was just thinking of what it's akin to. Let's pretend the Prairies has oil all over and everyone is in Leduc putting in their thing and all the stuff in Boston is making a better rig to get more oil out of Leduc. If you just go out on your own and, let's say, go to Saskatchewan and you'll be the first one there, but we're all racing after that one little oil patch and there's a whole world out there. If you partner in the funding, pharma will go with us and we'll get investment. They don't need to own it they just want to know where the oil is out there and they'll take care of the rest thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
I thank you very much. We've only had two witnesses today. You've been one of the most dynamic groups that we've had. We've had amazing witnesses come to this committee, but really this has been very stimulating and the time has just raced by.
I want to thank you for coming. I want to thank the committee for all their very good questions.
With that I will adjourn.