Mr. Speaker, I will try to pull myself together, even though I am not in a great mood, and begin by saying that we agree with the principle of the bill, but we will not be able to support it at third reading.
We tabled amendments, on which I will elaborate later on and which would have greatly improved this bill and made it much more acceptable. More importantly, these amendments would have made the bill extremely compatible with the scientific policy statement proposed by the Quebec department of science and technology, while also making it respectful of Quebec and of its policies in the area of science and technology.
Be that as it may, committee members from both the government and the opposition worked very hard. I do not think I missed a single committee meeting and I took a great interest in this issue, which involves research and a major concern to us, namely health.
Let us begin by the beginning. If we wanted to look at the historical background of this legislation, we would go back to 1994. At the time, I was a young member of parliament full of idealism, an idealism that is not totally gone. A report published by the OECD indicates that Canada lags far behind when it comes to public spending on research. During the pre-1994 years, Canada was far behind the other OECD members.
Not only is Canada far behind in terms of public spending and initiatives to promote research, but research is also fragmented, there is a lack of co-ordination and the myth of Professor Calculus, whom our young pages will surely remember, a researcher who works in isolation in his laboratory and has little interaction with the other members of the scientific community, was somewhat pertinent here in Canada, in the early nineties.
This is why we support the bill in its intent, which is to put researchers in contact with one another and to establish virtual research networks from very precise thematic orientations so that they can communicate their results to one another.
A few months ago, the government established a board of directors consisting then and now of really interesting people from all walks of life. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their involvement in the scientific community, because some of them have been involved for many years.
I am thinking of Dr. Henry Friesen who, as everybody knows, chaired the Medical Research Council of Canada. The bill before us will abolish this council. I am thinking, of course, of Michel Bureau, from the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec, who also worked very hard to guide the interim board of directors. I am thinking of Andrée Demers, the director of the research group on the social aspects of prevention, of Eric Maldoff, who is a lawyer, which goes to show that one may be trained in law and be interested in research, of Dr. Yves Morin, professor emeritus at the faculty of medicine, of Cameron Mustard, the director of research at the Institute for Work and Health, of Dr. Louise Nadeau, an associate professor, and of Dr. Neda L. Chapel.
I also want to thank Maria Knoppers, an assistant professor at the University of Montreal faculty of law, who is a specialist on ethical issues relating to research protocols and on the precautions to take to ensure that research complies with the ethical standards that we are entitled to expect.
I will make a digression to point out that it is rather strange to see that research work has been done in Canada for over 50 years but the government has never felt the need to put in place a policy on ethics in research. There are of course granting agencies such as the Medical Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council that came together and drafted a common policy. The fact remains however that the government itself has failed to do it.
I think of course of Paul Lucas, whom I know, as I have been very interested in the whole question of drug patent review, who is the chairman and chief executive officer of Glaxo in Mississauga. I think of Robert Mackenzie, who is the dean of advanced studies research at McGill University; of Murray Martin, the chairman of the board of the Vancouver Hospital; of Robert Perrault, a medical consultant in heart health; of Robert Pritchard, from the University of Toronto, and the list goes on. We must remember, however, that a provisional governing council has suggested directions.
The intent of the bill before us is to get researchers into a network so that the whole scientific community can benefit from the results of the work done by a particular group of researchers.
This is not what we have a problem with, and I will have an opportunity to revert to this point. What we do have a problem with is the fact that—and we find this quite strange—the provinces have not been associated with this bill. We will have some numbers to provide on this later. We know there is a great deal of catching up to do in Quebec, in the field of intra muros research, research done in federal laboratories.
For example, Quebec, which is developing a science policy, has provided $400 million over two years. Quebec, which represents 25% of the population, has managed to provide in its budget $400 million for research over two years, while the federal government will provide $500 million for all of Canada, at the most important point in the establishment of Canadian institutes of health research. It seems to me it would have been interesting to associate the provinces with this, to agree to take their recommendations into consideration.
It is especially important to recognize that health care is a provincial jurisdiction. The fact still remains that, when the government was seeking to establish the Canadian institutes of health research, it called on a number of actors. It called on people from industry, representatives of consumer groups, colleges and universities, which are responsible, as we know, for most health research; it also called on the hospitals. As I said, the provinces were consulted very weakly, very reservedly and very timidly.
To show where things stand in health research, I will take the year 1998 as an example. I will take great care to speak slowly. I realize that, in the past, I have made things a bit difficult for the House interpreters; I was criticized for it and, in the next few months, I intend to adjust my speed.
Members of the House will surely join me in applauding the interpreters who work very hard for us. Thus, it is important that we keep delivering our speeches calmly, which makes them easier to understand anyway.
I was saying that, according to available data for 1998, which is therefore fairly up to date, $2.3 billion was spent on health research. For clarity sake, here is a breakdown of how the responsibilities were divided: 27% of health research was carried out by companies and 7% by provincial governments. This is a national average. Understandably, British Columbia , Ontario and Quebec invest more; an average being a measure of the central tendency, this can reflect a biased reality.
The federal government invested 16% of the funding available for research, while the others, namely private lenders, invested 18%; foreign sources, 8%; private non-profit organizations, 12%; and hospitals, universities and institutes, 12 %.
We can see that it is primarily the private sector that is funding research in Canada, when the total of $2.3 billion is broken down by source.
However, if we were to apportion intra-muros research mandates, namely the research being done by public institutions—as opposed to extra-muros research which is done in the private sector—by various federal laboratories and by various governments, the breakdown would be as follows: hospitals fund 18% of research and private non-profit organisations, 6%.
During the 1990s, the OECD reminded us that the federal government, which funds only 3% of the research, had to make a effort to catch up.