Mr. Speaker, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of death among Canadian women and the statistics are not encouraging. Breast cancer has been increasing by 1.5% every year since 1981. One in nine Canadian women will be afflicted by this disease. But there are encouraging signs.
Many people in this House participated in the CIBC Run for the Cure that raised millions of dollars for breast cancer research. Also support groups are developing for families and the patients affected by breast cancer. We also have new surgical techniques that are less disfiguring and new treatments that we hope can prevent breast cancer in the future.
That is not good enough. We have to find a cure. We encourage the government to increase its commitment to develop more research into breast cancer.
I also encourage women to seek out their doctors to do screening for breast cancer. Women who have breast cancer should make sure their daughters are checked also.
Let us use October not just as a month to look at breast cancer in its entirety, but let us look at October as a start to eradicate it.