Leaders and Legacies Canadian leaders and leadership stories
Janet Rossant is the Chief of Research at the Hospital for Sick Children.
Interviewed by Brenna Atnikov.
Atnikov: What keeps you up at night?
Rossant: With our aging population, we have to relook at how we deliver healthcare. Among other things, we have to develop a more integrated model that moves healthcare back into the community and into the home. Treating chronic diseases at home can offer a much better quality of life than doing so in a hospital, and the cost is less. But to do so, we need strong homecare systems to provide appropriate support for patients and their families.
Healthcare costs continue to rise. Today, they are running close to 50% of provincial budgets. As researchers, my colleagues and I have to look quite hard at what we do, because the healthcare system has only restricted dollars to be able to invest. We have to look at the business case of whether what we are developing is going to be something governments will pay for. They’re going to ask, “Is this treatment really going to save us money? Is it so much better than anything done before that it’s worth the investment?”
Atnikov: If things turn out well in Canada over the next 20 years, what would have happened?
Rossant: We will start to see technological changes in health delivery that are not necessarily going to cost more than we currently spend, including new drugs and one-time curative treatments. A whole new area will be patient-specific medicine, for example, identifying the genes that are wrong in a cancer and using a particular drug to treat it. You’re saving money because you’re only treating the right people at the right time with the right drug. Patient-specific stem cell therapies will be available to cure diseases like diabetes, Parkinson’s and vision loss. When we spread that sort of personalized approach out across many different diseases, it will reduce our overall costs, improve treatments and make for a healthier society.
Canada will be considered a hub of creativity and not the Canada of old that digs coal and makes cars. We have harnessed the concept of urban centres as being the driver for Canadian success and have invested in our infrastructure. Canada has become the place of choice for the most creative and innovative people in the world.
Atnikov: If things turn out badly in Canada over the next 20 years, what will the story have been?
Rossant: We made it difficult to bring creative people here. We need to be open to people coming to and going out of Canada. We failed to invest in fundamental research, innovation and the creative force. If we don’t focus on the future and build on our strengths, we will become a so-so nation. We will not achieve the impact that we can across the world in the arts, science, business, finance, and politics.
Atnikov: What energizes you about Canada?
Rossant: We are a multicultural country that accepts and embraces people from all over the world. People come here for many different reasons, and that mixture of skill sets and viewpoints gives us huge opportunities. We have vibrant urban centres that continue to grow. When you bring people into close proximity and provide the right infrastructure, you can cause interactions that lead to new ideas and inventions. At the same time, vibrant urban centres almost always have an underclass. We have to provide stepping stones for people to move through the system and a social net to support them when they can’t. If we don’t enhance our urban centres, then we stand to lose against the rest of the world.
Scientific research will be an important driver of the economy of the future. It works best in environments and cultures that support collaboration and cooperation—something that we offer in Canada. When people come here, they are always amazed by the culture of collaboration and “cooperativity”. Some say that, to be the best, we have to be competitive. But by collaborating, we can bring new ideas to the table and also pragmatically share our limited resources in order to make an impact beyond the dollars that are invested.
Canada remains a trusted voice in global political affairs. We are fair and open, we look at all sides, we try to make rational decisions and provide support across the world where we can and where we see it as the right thing to do. Canada should never strive to be a super power, but rather maintain our independence while still having allies. Being seen as a leader of the environmental movement and as a trusted voice in geopolitical circles is going to help attract the brightest and best to Canada.
— This interview originally ran on Possible Canadas.