International Trade committee  The only comment I would make is that we don't have any Alzheimer's drugs in Canada that are off patent protection yet because the drugs are so new.

International Trade committee  Not yet; the drugs are still so new that.... I think Aricept will be the first one to go off patent protection, but it isn't yet. I don't have the dates for the other ones. We really have only four drugs that are available, and they're really only available in the mild and mode

International Trade committee  What I did say is that in the “International Report on Access to Medicines”, Canada ranked 23rd out of 29 OECD countries in access to medications for the mental illness class of drugs. That was what I was talking about. That's just to correct the record.

International Trade committee  That's your question.

International Trade committee  I don't pretend to be an expert in how long a patent life should be extended. I guess what we are saying is that the access piece is most important to people with Alzheimer's disease, and we're actually just saying that the playing field should be levelled with what is already oc

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  Yes. That's a report that was prepared by Rx and D. It's called the “International Report on Access to Medicines” and it is from 2010. For drugs for mental illness, which is where the Alzheimer's disease drugs are ranked within that group, they were ranked at 27 out of 29 in term

International Trade committee  Yes.

International Trade committee  I guess what I said is that I think it's most important that Canada maintain our investment in innovation and research and development. That is where people with Alzheimer's disease and people who are affected with neurological disorders.... It has the least success rate in terms

International Trade committee  Good afternoon, and thank you for the invitation to appear in front of the Standing Committee on International Trade today. We at the Alzheimer Society of Canada have recently had the opportunity to meet with Minister Ed Fast in Toronto, and we are very pleased that this importa

International Trade committee  It's very good.

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  I'll say just two things. Recently, in meetings I've had in Ottawa with members of Parliament, the Alzheimer Society has received two messages, one being that any issues around the creation of a strategy will not be looked on very favourably, that the push for having strategies i

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  All of our components for a dementia strategy are included in the components for a national brain strategy, because we work very closely with NHCC. It was really a question of timing when we wrote the Rising Tide report and we were involved in pulling together the recommendatio

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  We do have one brain bank in Canada. I'm saying this because I was recently at a collaborative meeting with a number of researchers from across Canada and CIHR--and I'm going on my memory of that meeting. My understanding is that we do have one brain bank. I believe it's in the M

Subcommittee on Neurological Disease committee  I don't know for certain, but I heard this at a meeting I was at. It will need to be double-checked.