Health committee  Thirty-four million of this money is actually for AIDS research, particularly research focused on the discovery of a new vaccine. It's also for preparing the low- and middle-income countries for clinical trials, once we have a vaccine. It will ensure that we have trained people to carry out these trials.

Health committee  I think it's an excellent question, and it's something we're looking at, particularly as we're increasing our investments in primary health care research, where we're starting to look at community-based research, community-based researchers. I think for certain aspects of research, and certainly under the patient-oriented research strategy, we will need to look not only into the large academic health centres but also into community centres that provide the types of services for which research is actually needed.

Health committee  If I may, I would add, first of all, that I think you're right. I think brain research is the last frontier. I think we're dealing, in this country, as in many developed countries, with major issues of mental health and also neurological disorders. And with an aging population, a number of these disorders, and particularly neuro-degenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's and Alzheimer's-related dementias, have an increasing prevalence.

Health committee  Well, we're certainly hoping it's going to mitigate. Obviously we're funding a lot of research to understand causes of the disease and to treat it at its roots. We realize this can take time, so in parallel we're really focusing research efforts on early diagnosis, early biomarkers, early imaging markers, which would allow us to treat the disease before substantial neuro-degeneration has occurred.

Health committee  As you know, we're monitoring ongoing diagnostic clinical trials very closely to determine whether the condition referred to as CCSVI exists, and whether there's an association and an increased prevalence between CCSVI and patients with MS. We're monitoring that closely, not only the studies that are being carried out in Canada but also the ones in the States and international trials as well.

Health committee  As soon as we have the evidence that it is indicated and ethically advisable to carry out a clinical trial, as I said, CIHR will have a request for applications for a pan-Canadian clinical trial when and if the conditions are appropriate to do that in a manner that's safe for Canadians.

Health committee  Currently there is not $10 million that has been specifically appropriated for that, but as you know, we have a base budget with money for clinical trials. Should the conditions prevail for such a trial to be indicated, obviously then we would take a step with our partners, including the MS Society and also the provinces, to ensure we had the proper resources to fund it.

Health committee  It's certainly affected by discoveries made in other countries, but I think what we're trying to achieve with the patient-oriented research strategy is to take full benefit of the discoveries that are made in this country and ensure they do impact the health of Canadians. We have a clinical research infrastructure that attracts clinical trials from the private sector, which we are losing to an alarming extent to other countries, particularly Asia and eastern Europe, on one hand, because their prices are not competitive--and I'm not sure how much we'll be able to change that--but also because we're not sufficiently organized, we're over-regulated, we're not sufficiently networked, so we're slow to recruit patients.

Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Members of the committee, as president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research it's a privilege for me to offer you a report card on the supplementary estimates (B) and use this opportunity to discuss how CIHR has employed its budgetary allocation to ensure fulfilling our mandate to improve through research the health of Canadians and the health care system.

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  What I'm telling you is that we haven't yet received formal approval from Treasury Board as to how we're going to spend this money, so I cannot give you exact figures. But we have asked for a significant portion of that money to be put in our open grants competition so we can fund clinical trials, and I do hope we will have a successful application in that area.

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  We always make sure that every aspect of an application has an expert reviewer to look at it. If the application looks like what I think it will look like, there will be vascular aspects, so we'll have an expert in vascular surgery involved. We need them. We'll also have an expert on MS.

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  Mr. Malo, you are putting a balloon into a blood vessel, a vein with a weak wall, and enlarging that vein. Is the procedure 100% safe? I know of no procedure, even eating natural food, that is 100% safe. The question we must ask ourselves with any procedure is whether the benefits outweigh the risks.

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  Out of that $16 million, which, as you know, was money provided to us by the federal government as an increase over our base budget to address a number of priorities, one of these priorities was to increase the funding for clinical trials. That's exactly what we're talking about today.

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  If you're asking whether the $16 million will be entirely devoted to MS research, the answer is no.

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  Well, as I said already, and I'm sorry that I'm repeating myself, we're really anxious to receive a proposal for a randomized clinical trial, with treatment, to look at the possibility of funding a study, if it's deemed scientifically acceptable and methodologically sound, to look in a unbiased fashion and in a larger number of patients across the country at the efficiency of the treatment.