Health committee  Start maybe at 35 or 40 years old by having a comprehensive risk assessment. Adapt the starting age and the ending age. Adapt the modalities. That means a mammography plus MRI. I think that's the approach. That's what we call the risk-stratified screening approach.

Health committee  In fact, when I participated in the co‑discovery of the BRCA1 gene and, more importantly, the BRCA2 gene, it looked like it was futuristic to test women for predispositions. We know that millions of women have been tested, and that has probably saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Health committee  What we proposed is to have a risk assessment, for example, at 40 years old. Based on their risk category—it's a risk stratification—those women who have a risk equivalent to the population can start later. However, the 20% of women having an intermediate or high risk should start at 40 years old.

Health committee  A comprehensive risk assessment...yes.

Health committee  I provided a slide deck. They should provide you.... They are just looking for the translation, I think.

Health committee  I'm fortunate to be part of an international consortium that studies data from 400,000 women in more than 35 countries on six continents. Thanks to these participants, we have been able to develop new tools to evaluate something called polygenic risk, which has been validated in more than a dozen prospective studies.

Health committee  Thank you. I would like to thank the committee for this opportunity to expose some of our work. For 21 years I have been the holder of a Canada research chair in cancer genetics. I'm also a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. A screening program will be sustainable if it delivers more benefit than harm, demonstrates value for money, is feasible to implement, is accepted by both the users and the providers and ensures equitable accessibility.