Evidence of meeting #13 for Subcommittee on Neurological Disease in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was parkinson's.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
Patrick Brown Conservative Barrie, ON
One comment is that the 16% to 17% figure that Dr. Grimes just mentioned is consistent with the 20% figure we heard last week. It would be neat to have CIHR here so we could delve into some of the questions with them.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
We'll deal with that later. Thank you.
Ms. Squire, you wanted to make a comment. I just wanted to give you a chance to comment to Mr. Brown.
10:05 a.m.
As an Individual
I was just going to say that in terms of the research, the applications that were coming forward....
I've lost my thought. I'm sorry.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
That's okay. Just take your time. I know it's kind of hard; I saw your hand raised, and I knew that the interval of time might be challenging for you.
I think Dr. Grimes was talking about the research and the difficulty of trying to get research accepted. He wanted to connect all the researchers across this country. Then Mr. Brown commented on that and suggested we needed to put another element into our presenters, our witnesses, for another meeting.
I'm trying to give you some connections to maybe help you remember what you were saying. If you remember, let me know, and I'll watch for your hand.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
So if I interrupt other people, you'll know I'm trying to get Ms. Squire's attention.
If you think about it, just raise your hand.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
I do this all the time, by the way. You might call it Parkinson's, they call it aging.
10:05 a.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
10:05 a.m.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
Thanks, Madam Chair.
I'm going to pick up on some of what Mr. Brown has been saying. Over and over we have heard about the importance of research dollars, and perhaps, Mr. Ireland, if you could table the specific “ask” that you're working on, the $600 million in the private–public partnership, that would be terrific.
Dr. Grimes, if you could describe your ideal research ask, is it to fund multiple centres? Is it to fund new researchers? What would you like to see the funding for?
10:05 a.m.
Associate Professor, Ottawa Hospital, University of Ottawa
In Ottawa we have a lot of very bright basic scientists who have a tendency to want to focus in on the one little aspect they're working on. I think they lose track of what the bigger focus is, and sometimes they lose track of the applicability of what they're doing. So one of the things we've been able to do in Ottawa is to provide seed money for researchers doing other things, and tie them into Parkinson's.
I think one of our ideas on a more national basis is to really try to bring people together who have very good ideas and who are working on very exciting things, and to make sure those things have clinical applicability. It's amazing how many scientists are out there doing a fantastic job in their very small area, while it has much wider applicability than, I think, they currently think it does.
This is one of the areas in which we could do a much better job on a national basis, really bringing more people together to share ideas, to say “You know how to do that. That's fantastic. Could we tap into that? Because I have this idea, and we could use your experiments to help us do this kind of thing.” This collaborative effort would speed things up a great deal.
10:05 a.m.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
So they are multidisciplinary, and they have applicability to the care side.
Do we currently fund multidisciplinary care? Or are you cobbling together money and people to deliver integrated care?
10:05 a.m.
Associate Professor, Ottawa Hospital, University of Ottawa
This meeting that I mentioned earlier on--I try to look at that, and also what all the different specialty clinics are doing in Canada.
Take the clinic in Manitoba. The Manitoba provincial government has said, yes, we'll give you funding to have a more integrated clinic approach. People feed into that. They really have a fantastic set-up and they really do care for a lot of people.
But they're the exception. At most of the clinics it's very cobbled together. I'm scraping money together to keep my nurses funded, so I have no money for anything else in terms of occupational therapists or physiotherapists or speech--all those other things.
So on a national basis, it's very cobbled together. It's kind of all over the place. I think on a national basis, we could do a lot better.
10:10 a.m.
As an Individual
Thank you. I remembered my point.
Talking about the researchers at Parkinson Society Canada, the money that we can give out for the grants is so limited that we focus on new pilot ideas, small projects that can be funded, so they can then go on to CIHR and the bigger funding institutions.
We have a lot of grants for graduate students to try to get them involved in realizing that Parkinson's research is good for their careers long term. So for pilot projects and graduate students and new researchers, we try to get them involved in Parkinson's. The $1 million that we have available in the pot to fund Parkinson's research goes largely to those categories.
10:10 a.m.
Board Member, Parkinson Society Canada
I just wanted to answer your question on “multidisciplinary”.
In Ontario, the Minister of Health recently decided that he would no longer fund speech therapy for Parkinson's. I can tell you that speech therapy is important and it goes a long way to ensuring that people living with Parkinson's are able to speak. If they don't have access to speech therapy, their ability to speak is going to be diminished pretty fast.
Right now, the Parkinson Society Ottawa regional office is subsidizing speech therapy for our clientele. We also subsidize and give physiotherapy classes with qualified physiotherapists. I can speak from my own experience as a caregiver trying to get an occupational therapist to come into the home to do an assessment on the safety in the home. That was something I had to pay for out of my own pocket. This is probably true all across Canada.
10:10 a.m.
Liberal
Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON
Thank you so much for that.
Dr. Grimes, what could we do at the national level to ensure that a family gets all of that support, from swallowing and speaking to moving, and all of the pieces? What could we do?
10:10 a.m.
Associate Professor, Ottawa Hospital, University of Ottawa
I think it really is maybe pointing out that it is definitely a necessity, that it's definitely lacking, and that it could make significant improvements to the quality of care for individuals.
Really, I think having a real drive for having more support services for individuals with chronic diseases is something that.... As I'm sure you've heard, with our aging population, this is something that will be even a bigger problem, and we're just not doing a good enough job of it, as you've heard already.
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
10:10 a.m.
As an Individual
Just in response to your question about multidisciplinary care, I would not focus on terminology too much. There are a lot of multidisciplinary teams, but that doesn't mean that individuals within those teams are working together very well. That's where perhaps, whether you call it interprofessional or interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary, it really doesn't matter.
So it's perhaps a matter of finding ways for those individuals to really communicate well and to collaborate. I think part of the issue is that when there is one physician, for instance, and I go to visit that one physician in her office, she's one person. And that's part of the lack of support for her. I think it becomes difficult when you feel as if you're working in isolation. That's part of why people shut down emotionally from the suffering of their patients.
If you build supports within the teams where people actually work together and don't bear that burden on their own, then you actually start to build systems and structures that people can work with and help them to respond more effectively to the suffering of their patients, and that involves nursing and all the other groups--OT, PD, and all of that stuff.
Just having them isn't really good enough. Having them, and having systems that allow them to work together--that's part of the solution to the problem.
10:15 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
Thank you so very much.
With the committee's permission, before Mr. Brown asks his next question, would you indulge my asking one more question?
Thank you.
Regarding a lot of the things we've talked about today, some are in federal jurisdiction and some in provincial jurisdiction. When you talk about home care and palliative care, those are primarily in provincial jurisdiction.
I just wonder if it wouldn't also be helpful to make sure that everybody makes this type of presentation to the provinces as well. You're talking about connecting the dots and collaborating between federal and provincial jurisdiction. No matter how much we scream and yell, we can't go over those jurisdictions, because you get hit really hard and everything shuts down.
Have you made these presentations in a systematic manner to all of the provinces across our nation? It's a very profound presentation you folks have.
Would anyone like to comment on that?
Mr. Ireland.