Health committee  The $10 million, I'm happy to say, would certainly be part of the funding of the CCSVI clinical trial. As you know, there was a fundable applicant, which is great news, so now we'll need to go through the ethics reviews; they have to take place. And most of that, in my understand

Health committee  We are continuing to advocate for clinical trials. Again, I assume that part of the $10 million would be certainly expended through a successful CCSVI clinical trial if we're able to have one.

Health committee  Actually, the MS Society itself is in an interesting sort of dilemma, in that we have been very successful in encouraging through an MS research and training network to encourage young researchers to come into MS research. We are now finding that we aren't able to support as many

Health committee  Initially, I would say most Canadians with MS who were interested in having the procedure were going not to the U.S. but to places in Europe, to the Caribbean, even as far as India. Most recently—and I think it makes a ton of sense—if a procedure is available in New York, and it

Health committee  --it's very different. If I could just say—

Health committee  Okay, sorry. I will wrap up by saying that we know a lot of people are going out of country, mostly to the U.S. right now, and we're really grateful that the various registries and observational studies will capture that information.

Health committee  I can start, and then we’ll see who would care to comment as well. First, I'll say that we all want this to happen as quickly as possible. But I do understand, and the MS Society does understand, that a process to get good information must be followed. We've been pushing to get

Health committee  Thank you. I'll provide a quick update about progress that has been made in determining the relationship between CCSVI and MS. First, The MS Society is very grateful to the Government of Canada and to all parliamentarians for making CCSVI and MS a health priority. People living

Health committee  Thank you.

Finance committee  You make a very good point in terms of the criteria for qualifying for either Canada Pension Plan disability benefits, the disability tax credit, or other programs. I'm happy to say that because of the work of organizations such as mine and many others, there has been an understa

Finance committee  We certainly have looked at some of our recommendations in terms of.... I assume you're talking about the ones around the Income Tax Act and EI.

Finance committee  With the EI proposal, which I think is very appropriate for the discussion today, we talk about more flexible sickness benefits that would allow people to actually work part time when they're able to, but still receive partial benefits. The way we would calculate that is that the

Finance committee  Thank you very much for the question. Yes, we work very closely together, in coalitions, with a number of other organizations that are equally concerned about these, especially in terms of the episodic disabilities part of the issue. That is probably the most problematic, given

Finance committee  Perfect. Thank you very much, and thank you for inviting the Multiple Sclerosis Society to present today. We are pleased to provide input on behalf of Canadians affected by multiple sclerosis. First a little about MS. It is an often progressive and disabling disease of the brain

Finance committee  We basically looked at it in terms of the model for the funding of medicare. The money is spent at the provincial level, but a significant portion of it comes from the federal government through transfers. I think both the Romanow and Kirby reports on health care a couple of ye