Thank you.

Thank you very much for your testimony. It has been very significant. It's really important to hear it in terms of palliative care, home care, and just the impact of living with and supporting people with dementia.

Like my colleague Rachael, I have family members and friends with different issues. I have a mother with Parkinson's and I have a father with vascular dementia. I've had a lot of exposure to these conditions, and I'm aware of the complexity and the lack of a focused approach to managing people with dementia. I'm very sympathetic to the need for a national dementia strategy and for an action plan for dementia.

I do want to focus, though, on the bill itself and ask you, specifically, about the weighting of the bill towards Alzheimer's versus all of the other forms of dementia. Alzheimer's is a disease; dementia is a syndrome. So with dementia, there are different groups of symptoms, and Alzheimer's is, right now, the predominant cause of those symptoms. I think about 50% to 60% of dementia cases originate with Alzheimer's. This morning we were at a session with regard to the tsunami of diabetes, and whether vascular disease will eventually be as equally prevalent in the cause of dementia.

The bill itself is not about a national dementia strategy. It's about a national strategy for Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. When you look at the conference that the minister is directed to hold, and when you look at the committee that will be formed to give advice going forward, there's a weighting towards Alzheimer: thus the Canadian Alzheimer association and Alzheimer groups.

I just want to get your perception on this. Is the goal here a dementia strategy or is the goal here an Alzheimer's disease strategy? I'd like to hear from all of you on this one, if I could.

John Oliver

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