You, as members of this committee, have the chance to do the same thing we are modelling for you today, which is to work collaboratively to get a bill passed that has its roots in the New Democratic Party with Mr. Gravelle and is continuing now with the other two parties in the House. I think this committee has a chance to make history by having the first national disease strategy adopted by Parliament. We are not unaware that it could become a model for other diseases and that there is a hunger for the federal government to play a leadership role—not encroaching upon any provincial powers to actually do the delivery of health care—by providing an operation of collaboration, co-operation, and best practices.
I want to begin by telling you the story of Ewart Angus. Ewart Angus was a member of the church where I was a minister for many years in Toronto. Ewart died, however, before I became the minister, and he left a sizable amount of money to the United Church of Canada. The United Church of Canada sort of lost track of that money and allowed it to grow over many years. I discovered it in the late 1990s. It had reached $5 million, and it was earmarked for seniors care in north Toronto. Nobody knew what to do with it. I did.
Ewart had been a member of our congregation and we asked for the money to be transferred to that congregation to enact its vision of providing care for people with Alzheimer's and other dementias. We built Angus House on Merton Street in Toronto, a really amazing model for Alzheimer's care. It has three floors of market and subsidized rent apartments geared towards seniors, and two floors for Alzheimer's care. This means that if one member of a couple has dementia, one of them can stay in their home while their spouse goes to a secure floor with good medical care. This was originally intended for early Alzheimer's, mild stage, but has now progressed to medium-stage and even more advanced-stage Alzheimer's.
Being good fiscal conservatives, as I am sometimes, we actually ended up with $2 million left over at the end of that project after having built the building, so we built another one called Cedarhurst, which is in Don Valley West, coincidentally. It provides another setting of 26 rooms for long-term residential care for people living with dementia.
It's based on a model in Australia, which we as a congregation came across, of relational care that was developed by Dr. John Tooth. Small groups of people with dementia, five at a time with one personal support worker, live in a residential setting and gradually develop a community that honours the person. It continues to this day. I was at Ewart Angus Homes' second campus, Cedarhurst, last week, and they are continuing to evolve and develop.
We need a national strategy because that model of care of purpose-built, intentional housing for people with dementia and long-term care needs is unfortunately almost unique in Canada. It links with Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, the University of Waterloo, and a variety of satellites. However, it is quite limited.
Mr. Nicholson's bill offers the possibility of taking best practices from a place like Ewart Angus Homes and spreading them across the country. It does that by capturing the attention of the Minister of Health and requiring her—or him in the future—to submit an annual report to Parliament. It fosters co-operation and collaboration through an advisory council, and it demands an updating to Canadians on how we're doing. It encourages increased funding for research, clinical care, patient support, and family support. It does that in the way that the federal government alone can do it, through the powers of convening, the powers of organizing, the powers of displaying exemplary forms of care, and by ensuring that we're able to spread that across the country.
There may be gems of care I don't know about in Winnipeg, Vancouver, or Cape Breton Island. I don't know where those models of care are.
By having a collaborative approach, we will learn where those things are and be sure that we have that kind of co-operation, and also bring in international best practices. I think the bill is quite clever. It's clever in that it draws attention to the issue. It requires the government to pay attention and report back to Canadians. It fosters collaboration, through an advisory group, and it begins to put some accountability on the government, as Canadians are looking for it for this particular disease.
I'm sure you've had drawn to your attention the report that was issued on November 15, 2016, "Dementia in Canada", by a Senate committee, which is co-chaired by my good friend and colleague Kenneth Ogilvie, and Senator Art Eggleton. It's a very fine study on dementia. It calls for a collaborative approach, what they're calling a Canadian partnership, to address dementia. By having an advisory committee embedded in this legislation, we would actually be able to live out what the Senate—after a very thorough study, much more thorough than we've done in the House of Commons—would actually envision. I commend it to your attention and to take great care as you go through clause-by-clause study on the bill, that we don't lose the spirit of what the Senate has learned, that Canadians are looking for leadership. We can provide that leadership by having such an advisory council bringing together the best of clinical treatment and research, as well as social workers and family caregivers, and those living with dementia.
I'm going to close by talking about an event I was at last week. The Alzheimer Society of Toronto, a formidable force under the umbrella of the Alzheimer Society of Canada, and the Alzheimer Society of Ontario, had a fundraiser. It was an amazingly successful fundraiser with really the best dinner I've had at a fundraiser in my life, but that's an aside. At that event, a woman with Alzheimer’s made the keynote speech. She carefully and cautiously chose her words and moved me to tears, as a person who is aware of her circumstances and is looking at what my former colleague Marian Ritchie called the long journey home. She gave me the courage and empowered me to keep fighting this fight. I'm encouraging you to do the same to make sure that we show Canadians that this Parliament takes this disease seriously and that we take every step we can to make sure that we engage with those who know more than we do and make a difference in the world of Alzheimer's and other dementias.
Thank you.