Madam Chair, a meaningful examination of the estimates will show one key figure which is not explained very well, because it is a single line and it is a transfer. It is a $55 million increase to the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Government of Canada's premier agency for health research. Its budget is now $617 million, more than double the amount it had at the time of its creation in the year 2000. Canadians are justified if they ask what they are getting in return for that money.
There are several ways to look at this. One of the ways is to simply look at the evidence in the recent outbreak of SARS. Funding to Canadian researchers working in areas directly relevant to SARS was acknowledged in a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine on March 31, and Canadian researchers at the B.C. Cancer Agency were the first in the world to sequence the genome of the suspected coronavirus that causes SARS. This was all fueled by the analyses that were carried out on samples and the great work that came out of the Winnipeg National Microbiology Laboratory. This sequencing is a critical first step in learning how to prevent and treat this disease and other infectious diseases.
The CIHR is providing $500,000 for research that will respond rapidly to the challenge of SARS and is also undertaking longer term initiatives to address infectious diseases. That is just one recent example of that particular budget line in the estimates.
The Minister of Health has led this team, from the federal government's role, of provincial, municipal and federal workers on the SARS front. However the people of Canada should know that it was the funding for research, which is such a large part of the federal government's strategy, under the health umbrella that was underpinning the success of our experience with the SARS outbreak. Despite the deaths, it could have been worse and we should be very proud. I for one am very proud of our minister and her role in that particular situation.
Perhaps the minister would like to tell us of another piece of research of which she is particularly proud.