Devolin Column 
November 30, 2006

Fighting Cancer in Canada

As we all know, cancer often strikes without warning and plays no favourites. Even the young and seemingly healthy are not immune.

At some point, cancer will touch the lives of each and every one of us. In fact, some 150,000 Canadians will be diagnosed with cancer this year and another 70,000 will succumb to its ravages.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced an important step in the fight against cancer by establishing the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer (CPAC). This announcement follows up on the $260 million committed to this life-saving strategy in Budget 2006 by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty.

The purpose of the CPAC, a not-for-profit corporation, will be to implement the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control, a five-year plan developed by more than 700 cancer survivors and experts. 

CPAC will be responsible for implementing the Strategy’s core objectives, namely, to reduce the number of new cases of cancer, to enhance the quality of life of those living with cancer, and to lessen the likelihood of Canadians dying from cancer. 

Cancer experts and survivors agree that the secret to success in the fight against cancer is knowledge: knowledge about how to prevent it; how to detect it, how to treat it, and how to survive it. 

The CPAC will serve as a national clearing house for state-of-the-art information about preventing, diagnosing, and treating cancer. Its job is to make sure that the best cancer care practices in any single part of Canada are known and available to health care providers in every part of Canada.

This will mean that when Quebec researchers or clinicians achieve a breakthrough in diagnostics, their new knowledge will benefit patients in Alberta. And when oncologists in British Columbia pioneer a successful treatment, it will be available to patients in Ontario.

Respecting that health care provision falls within provincial jurisdiction, the new national agency will play no role in the administration of health policy or programs. It will operate at arm’s length from government with its board of directors drawn from cancer stakeholder organizations; provinces and territories; patient, family and survivor groups; Canada’s Aboriginal peoples; and the federal government.

I have no doubt that the CPAC will save lives. In fact, experts are predicting the strategy could pre-empt as many as 1.2 million new cases of cancer and prevent 423,000 cancer deaths over the next 30 years.

Every day, medical researchers and practitioners here in Canada and around the world take small steps towards transforming cancer from a death sentence into a manageable illness.

The Canadian Partnership against Cancer will play a critical role in the fight against cancer by putting us on a defined path that will, we pray, lead us one day to a cure.