Rock announces "new era for health research"

Date: Nov. 4, 1999
Time: 3:51 pm

The institutes, which will serve as the new federal funding body for health research in Canada, are also the organization the Liberals want to use to shore up their miserly reputation for funding health research in comparison with other G-7 countries.

"This legislation heralds a new era of health research and innovation, dedicated to solving the greatest health challenges facing Canadians," Rock said today. "The CIHR is all about excellence: to encourage researchers to seek it and to support those who achieve it."

The CIHR organization hopes to better integrate the different fields of health research and break down traditional research barriers. The new organization also plans to focus on research based on specific themes, such as aging or children's health, as opposed to the traditional focus on the various research fields, such as biomedical, clinical and other types of research.

The CIHR will replace the Medical Research Council of Canada as the primary federal funding body for health research, and plans are to build on existing health research institutions from across the country.

"The creation of CIHR is a clear indication of a commitment to strengthen Canada's research capacity," says Dr. Michael Smith, winner of the 1993 Nobel prize in chemistry and director of the Genome Sequence Centre at the British Columbia Cancer Research Centre. "This is a wonderful time to be a part of this country's research community."

The CIHR plan was unveiled in last February's federal budget, and is expected to become the government's main funding agency by January. Federal funding for research will also be bumped up to almost $500 million annually by 2001-02, twice what was spent last year.

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