Health committee  I think the policies of at least the western countries—the U.K., the U.S., western Europe, Japan and Australia—are similar to what we do here. The intellectual property is owned either by the person who discovered it or the universities. By and large it's the same. China is very

Health committee  This is a question that we have all been grappling with, and that every country other than the United States grapples with. I think the answer is very simple. Health is a global problem, and we're a rich country, so we need to do our share to help solve a global problem. That w

Health committee  We need to realize that health is not all about drugs. A large part of health is how we live, how we eat, how we exercise and who we interact with. Diabetes is a disease of societal change, so investing in research that leads to improved health behaviours is actually the fundamen

Health committee  It's a question that we face many times. I think the first thing is to say that public funding, even for studies that are “funded publicly”, does not even cover a half of the cost, so the investigator in the university has to bring added money. Second, unlike many countries, Ca

Health committee  I think we have to think of why global pharmaceutical companies would invest in Canada. First, we need something special to offer. We're a tiny part, population-wise, of the world. We need special expertise that is better than the U.K., the U.S., Japan or Korea. There are some

Health committee  Mr. Saini, you asked two big and broad questions. I'll deal with both because we've been working in both areas for about 20 years. With Alzheimer's, it is a long-term process, and the current business model is that you need to get your results within a few years in order to make

Health committee  I give a qualified yes.

Health committee  Yes. There are two numbers I'll give you. One is that to be as competitive as the U.K., the U.S., Japan or Australia, we'd have to increase our national health research funding by 50%. Second, we'd have to redistribute the money so that more money goes into clinical trials and po

Health committee  That's a very good question. We have to triple the amount we put into clinical trials to be comparable with other countries. Second, right now to get a clinical trial started after you get funding, you have about 100 separate steps. For a large clinical trial, those steps cumul

Health committee  Well, that's a shame. I was invited to participate last Thursday, so as you can imagine—

Health committee  Okay. Well, I hope they'll at least share it with you after translation, but I will try to explain things slowly, now that I know you don't have them. Was what I said understood by the committee?

Health committee  Okay. Thank you very much. I want to compare the amount spent on basic research in various countries and other forms of research. In the U.S., the U.S. National Institutes of Health spends 55% of its budget on basic biomedical research, and all other forms, which are clinical, p

Health committee  Okay. Well, the point I want to make is that in Canada, we only spend 3.3% as opposed to 10% or 11%. I'll wind up with one point: What is needed in Canada? We need to increase funding for all forms of health research right across the board. Importantly, we need to redress t

Health committee  Good morning, and thank you very much. My name is Salim Yusuf. I was born in India and trained in medicine in India, and then received a Rhodes Scholarship. I went to Oxford and then worked in England, doing both clinical medicine and research for eight years. Then I moved to th