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Joe Sornberger is Director of Communications Programs for the Canadian Stem Cell Foundation and author of Dreams & Due Diligence: Till and McCulloch’s Stem Cell Discovery and Legacy.
Back in the day, I toiled as a newspaper reporter, covering Parliament Hill.
I was there at a Québec campaign stop during the 1993 election, when then Prime Minister Kim Campbell, responding to another reporter’s question about a draft copy of proposed changes to social programs, chose to chide him, saying that “an election is no time to discuss serious issues.”
To be fair, Ms. Campbell — who claims she was misquoted, though I remember all of us going over the tape very carefully when we got back on the bus — was trying to make the point that discussing an overhaul of Canadian social policy was not realistic in a 47-day election campaign. She was right about that, but wrong about elections being no time to discuss serious issues — or at least raise them. And it cost her: she never got to move into 24 Sussex.
Elections are exactly the best time to raise serious issues. It’s when politicians of all political stripes want something (your vote) and are prepared to give you something (their attention) to get it. An election provides a moment in time when Canadians are empowered to tell those who aspire to lead them what their priorities are. And the opportunity to vote for those who will act on those priorities.
A key priority for all Canadians is health. An early 2014 Abacus Data poll named health care as the number one issue for Canadian voters. While fears about the economy have come to dominate discussion, health, as an issue, hasn’t gone away. It keeps many of us awake at night. If we get sick, will quality care be available? Is our already-overstressed health-care system sustainable? How will we, as a nation, deal with an aging population and the array of currently incurable chronic conditions?
Readers of this blog know that right here in Canada, stem cell researchers are moving ever closer to delivering bold new therapies that could see diabetics freed from daily insulin injections, help heart attack patients heal faster and resume full lives, and make cancer therapies less toxic and more efficacious. They are on the verge of producing new approaches to autoimmune disorders like MS and Crohn’s, and neurological conditions like Parkinson’s, stroke and spinal cord injury.
There is a plan. Over the past 18 months, Canada’s top researchers, clinicians, industry leaders, health charity executives and philanthropists have come together to craft the Canadian Stem Cell Strategy & Action Plan. A bold private/public partnership, the Action Plan calls for Canada to lead the way in bringing up to 10 new stem cell treatments to the clinic within 10 years.
We are calling on the Government of Canada and all political parties to commit to contributing just one-third of the investment — about $50 million annually over the next decade.
But we need your help. We need you to tell the people who want your vote — your federal riding candidates and party leaders — that they need to support the Canadian Stem Cell Strategy & Action Plan.
It’s easy. It takes less than two minutes. Just visit www.stemcellstrategy.ca and follow the prompts.
Be empowered. Seize this moment in time. Show your support for stem cells and regenerative medicine.
It’s a serious issue.
Guest
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