June 12, 2015 – Toronto, Ontario
Check Against Delivery
Good morning, and thank you, Stanley, for that kind introduction.
As the moms and dads in this hospital today know, there is nothing worse than having a sick child.
Nothing more frightening, nothing that makes a parent feel more powerless.
And that’s here, in a country like Canada, where we have access to quality health care services like Sick Kids, where we have trained health workers, and where we have the benefit of the latest technology.
Imagine being the parent of a sick child in a developing country. Where health care facilities may be too far away to access easily. Where health care workers may be scarce or not sufficiently trained. Where affordable and effective health care products and technologies are not available.
Around the world, 17,000 children die of preventable causes every day.
Imagine the parents of those children, their brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles.
It is for them—the children and the people they leave behind—that Canada has made improving maternal, newborn and child health its top development priority.
In 2010, Canada helped to focus the world’s attention by leading the G-8 Muskoka Initiative on maternal, newborn and child health, also known as MNCH.
And since then, we have achieved tremendous results.
More women are surviving pregnancy and childbirth.
And millions more children are celebrating their fifth birthday.
That is good news. It is something to be proud of.
But, we still have a lot to do.
And Canada continues to rise to the challenge.
In May 2014, Prime Minister Harper once again mobilized the global community and reinvigorated the commitment to maternal, newborn and child health by hosting the Saving Every Woman, Every Child: Within Arm's Reach summit in Toronto last year. At the summit, Canada pledged an additional $3.5 billion to build on the results we have already achieved for the world's mothers and children.
And Canada continues to advocate strongly for maternal, newborn and child health to remain a clear and top priority in the evolving, post-2015 development agenda.
Today, I am here to assure you that Canada’s engaged and passionate leadership is not waning.
I am here on behalf of Prime Minister Stephen Harper—who I know cares deeply about this issue—with an important partner of the Government of Canada in this effort: Grand Challenges Canada.
Our partnership with Grand Challenges Canada is an example of the potential of innovation to transform lives.
If we are going to end the preventable deaths of mothers and children within a generation, we will need to encourage new ideas and thinking.
We will need to test these ideas in realistic conditions and bring innovations to operational scale.
And will need to find the ways and means to get these innovations out on the front line of national health services all over the world.
We believe that Grand Challenges Canada is the right organization for that job.
That’s why I am pleased to announce that, as part of Prime Minister Harper’s $3.5-billion commitment last year, the Government of Canada is making significant investments this year to support Grand Challenges Canada’s Innovation Platform for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.
We know that innovation takes time.
And we know that we need to measure the results of those innovations over time.
That is why we are here today: to ensure that our partnership has the chance to achieve its full potential.
To allow innovations to be scaled up and demonstrate results that improve and save lives.
The innovation platform will develop and test promising initiatives by Canadian and developing-country innovators to improve the health and well-being of poor women, newborns and children under the age of five.
The platform will centre on three programs:
- Saving Lives at Birth, which seeks to improve maternal and newborn survival and reduce stillbirths;
- Saving Brains, which promotes physical and cognitive development in a sustainable manner; and
- MNCH Stars in Global Health, which is a platform used to source bold ideas where the innovator defines the health challenge and the innovative solution.
By investing in health innovations through Grand Challenges Canada—innovations like the fetal heart rate monitor that we saw earlier—Canada is helping mothers, newborns and children around the world to not only survive, but thrive.
And rest assured that Canada continues to champion this important issue.
We are hard at work to ensure that maternal, newborn and child health remains central within the post-2015 development agenda.
And we are seeking out and promoting innovative financing solutions.
Solutions like the Global Financing Facility, or GFF, which Canada sees as playing a key role in scaling up the financing we need to achieve our goals.
The GFF will allow us to leverage additional funding from developing countries, the private sector and the International Development Association to create a sustainable source of funds for women and children’s health.
As Chair of the OECD-World Economic Forum Redesigning Development Finance Initiative Steering Group, I am also committed to working with global partners to identify, test, and scale up public-private blended finance models in a systematic way.
This kind of blended financing will give us the power to turns billions of dollars into trillions.
And that, along with the innovation that Grand Challenges Canada brings to the table, will help to speed up progress toward our collective development goals.
Simply put, Grand Challenges Canada has the potential to improve and save the lives of the world’s women and children.
So, thank you, Grand Challenges Canada, for rising to the challenge.
For thinking outside the box.
We look forward to achieving improved health outcomes on the ground and lasting results for those who need them most.
The Government of Canada is proud to have you as a partner in this mission.
Thank you.
