Thank you, Madam Chair.
I will address you in French, to begin with, if you don't mind. Thank you for your invitation to appear this morning. It is greatly appreciated.
The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada is the leading national organization supporting people affected by this progressive disease. Our mission is to find a cure for this disease, to stop MS and to improve the quality of life of people affected by it. Thirty thousand people with MS are members of the Society, right across the country.
We are pleased to be able to work very closely with other organizations that support people with neurological diseases, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, to foster a better understanding of these illnesses and support the development of policies that meet the needs of Canadians affected by neurological diseases.
Neurological diseases will, within 20 years, be the leading cause of disability and death in our country.
I have colleagues who have joined me and will speak to issues that are important as we come to Parliament Hill today. They will speak on issues of income security and support for informal caregivers—family members and friends—and I'll reserve my final minutes to speak to the area of research.
Research into understanding the cause, how to prevent, and the eventual cure of MS has been at the heart of our work in our 60 years of history. We have funded $120 million in health research, and that grows by about $10 million a year.
The Neurological Health Charities Canada coalition is advocating with the federal government for the government to develop a brain strategy that would, among other things, bring focus on research on neurological disease. I think we can, as Canadians, find tremendous pride in the leadership of researchers in this country in MS research, and more broadly in the area of neurosciences. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, in their most recent strategic plan, acknowledged this as a priority, reflecting the tremendous strength of research in these areas.
You have all heard, no doubt, of the very exciting new pathway for discovery and new therapy in MS, now very well known as CCSVI, which speaks to the obstruction of veins that drain the blood from the brain. It is important to underline that the society, with a call for research applications, responded vigorously and without precedent by launching a request for proposals from Canadian researchers just in the last months. On June 14, I will be delighted to be in a position to announce the results of that competition.
CCSVI is, I think, a very compelling example of the appetite of Canadians to see very, very rapid translation of new discoveries into treatments that provide benefit and improvements to our health as Canadians. This is at heart the central issue that we face in this context, combined with the need for evidence about that benefit. That is why we have pressed on the accelerator with our own commitments to research, and it's why, in our meeting with the Minister of Health at the end of the day today, we will be asking her, as we announced yesterday, for an incremental commitment of $10 million that would be added to the parliamentary budget appropriations for the CIHR as a designated CCSVI research fund.
The model for this, by the way, is available in a similar supplemental appropriation to the CIHR for research on medical isotopes.
This idea of the translation of research into benefits for Canadians in terms of improved health is also at the heart of a very important strategy of the CIHR called the “patient-oriented strategy”. That strategy is fundamentally about equipping Canada to make sure that new discoveries don't stay in the lab or in the researcher's mind but that they come as quickly as possible to benefit Canadians and become available through our health systems throughout the country in a way, obviously, that makes them publicly available to everyone.
With that, I thank you, members of Parliament, for your time and for this opportunity for a conversation about these important issues.
Merci.