Health committee  We've seen an enormous amount of collaboration in Canada between researchers and internationally. Most of our projects, because of their size, have some international link, sometimes pivotal, sometimes part of a looser consortium, but sometimes absolutely pivotal. Canada's incredibly collaborative, and we're very lucky to have that kind of culture.

Health committee  Canada has been criticized too much, in my opinion. We do brilliant research. We punch above our weight when it comes to research, but it stays in academia. We need anything we can do to facilitate translation in terms of creating the right clinical infrastructure networks. That is something, and it's not a small topic because it includes information systems and e-health records in the case of health.

Health committee  That is a super question. I think there's a whole host of things, societal issues, that we need a lot of debate around. Let me give you the example of smoking. I was living in Ireland when Ireland became the first country to ban smoking in the workplace. There was a piece of very strong legislation that was driving a behaviour or lifestyle bit from individuals.

Health committee  As funders, we don't have direct links or experience with the regulatory authorities. It would be companies involved in our projects who would bring something forward to the regulators. I've heard both stories as well, and I don't really have an opinion.

Health committee  I don't know whether this is true or not, but....

Health committee  Traditionally, our projects have been reaching out to the private sector on particular, specific projects. We would like to move more to look at a program or look at an area in agriculture, for example. We would love to have more of a close connection with the food industry, the meat industry.

Health committee  No, it's an opinion that I have. I believe that if people have access to their own genome sequence, and it might be obvious that they have some susceptibility in the future to getting some of these chronic diseases—it might be some cancers, they might be prone to Alzheimer's disease or to type 2 diabetes—I believe, with that information, some of them, not all of them, will change their lifestyle to life longer, healthier lives.

Health committee  No, it could help manage—

Health committee  Using genomic solutions to help with type 2 diabetes does not in any way mean taking a pill. The use of genome data for complex diseases starts with prevention, for sure. So I think we're never going to.... If we concentrate on treating chronic disease with new medicines and not look after the preventive part, we're going to lose; it's not sustainable.

Health committee  —I'm saying could help manage people on the whole spectrum. The one thing I did mention in terms of specificity was in the case of epilepsy or cancer when you want to treat somebody but it's not one disease. Any cancer will have multiple types of.... Epilepsy and autism are the same.

Health committee  It's not a subsidiary relationship. Genome Canada has a contractual relationship with six regional genome centres from B.C. to Atlantic. The relationship is such that their job contractually, if you like, is to raise money for co-funding because each program we run is a co-funded model.

Health committee  In terms of private insurance, the discussion is still—

Health committee  All I can say is more or less what I said in response to the first question. The discussion about private insurance is ongoing. So it's important to examine that element closely with the Privy Council, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and other appropriate authorities.

Health committee  That's a great question. It's exactly the question that we asked the project teams who gave us proposals for the personalized health competition. They had to indicate what the economic rationale was for introducing the genomics-based—whatever in particular it was—in cancer or epilepsy or whatever.

Health committee  That's an excellent question. I don't have all of the answers, but I know that some of the top lawyers in this country are working on it, and some within our projects. Each of our projects—and this will be true for the 17 projects we're going to announce soon in the personalized health competition—has integrated into it sub-projects that are to do with the ethical, legal, and social issues related to some of this new information we're discovering.