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Enterprise Security Magazine | Thursday, September 22, 2022
Canada's government is committed to ensuring the growth of its life sciences sector. Its high-quality talent and low operational costs make it an ideal place to invest in the area.
FREMONT, CA: During the past two years, the pandemic caused by COVID-19 and the slowdown of economic trade have exposed some of Canada's structural weaknesses across domestic and international supply chains in various industries, particularly the health care industry. The government took action after Canada could not manufacture its drug supply, protective equipment, ventilators, and testing materials, forcing it to take action. The significance of a resilient and innovative biomanufacturing and life sciences sector has never been more apparent.
Understanding the importance of promoting the long-term, sustainable growth of Canada's life sciences and health technology (LSHT) sector, the government took the initiative to develop a comprehensive strategy to rebuild a strong and resilient domestic biomanufacturing and life sciences sector. It will ensure access to essential vaccines, therapeutics, and other life-saving medicines. The budget for 2021 allocated approximately $2.2 billion for the implementation of the strategy, which consists of five pillars:
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Strong and coordinated governance: Integrate decision-making and priority-setting to support Canada's pandemic preparedness, rapidly understand and respond to health threats, and develop a talent pipeline for skilled research and development.
Creating a solid foundation by enhancing research systems and the pipeline of talent: Offer increased research and innovation capacity at Canadian universities and in the ecosystems that support life sciences.
Expanding businesses by doubling down on existing and emerging areas of competitive advantage: Through the Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF), fund new investments to address the remaining critical gaps in domestic capabilities, with $1 billion committed over seven years.
Expand critical public assets supporting pandemic preparedness to bolster the public's capability.
Enabling innovation by ensuring regulatory excellence: Ensure Canada has a world-class regulatory system, expertise, and infrastructure for clinical trials by creating a new Clinical Trial Fund (CTF)and sustained improvements to Canada's regulatory system.
From an investor's perspective, this type of government commitment implies more incentives and public investment through allocated funds to revitalize the sector, which could be an attractive factor for businesses considering Canada as a possible location.
Canada has one of the best-educated talent pools in the world and a large pool of highly skilled life sciences experts with a wide range of expertise. According to InvestCanada, Canada is the most educated country in the world, with 59.4 percent of its 25-to-64-year-old population having completed postsecondary education. Over 4,8 million of these graduates hold degrees from STEM or healthcare programs, making Canada an ideal location for life sciences companies. In 2018, Canada had nearly 125,000 STEM graduates, representing a 51 percent increase from 2010. Canada's labor force is comprised of over 2,8 million STEM graduates.
Canada provides an innovative environment for life sciences companies, particularly in the provinces of Québec and Ontario and the Québec City—Windsor corridor. It is a hub of innovation, talent, collaboration, and industry clusters, all emblematic of what Canada offers global investors in life sciences. This corridor represents approximately 1,100 organizations and 490 graduate and undergraduate programs in biological and biomedicine sciences, making it the second-largest life sciences cluster in North America. The diversity of these activities is significant: from Montreal's AI expertise driving healthcare innovation to Toronto's large concentration of hospitals, research institutes, business incubators, and venture capital organizations, each stop along the corridor has unique characteristics and specialties to round out Canadian expertise in life sciences, and their concentration creates a diverse and dynamic collaborative ecosystem.
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