Sure.
Evidence of meeting #15 for International Trade in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was ceta.
Evidence of meeting #15 for International Trade in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was ceta.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Thank you, Chair.
Actually, I think I'm going to continue on in that vein of questions.
Without this deal, how many jobs would be at stake? If we didn't have a deal and we didn't have the proper patent protections in place, what do you see in the future for the biotech sector in Canada?
5:05 p.m.
Chair, Board of Directors, LifeSciences British Columbia
Again, I don't want to paint it as doom and gloom, because it is a strong community based on strong research and strong entrepreneurs, but I think the number that Paul just reiterated is quite striking, that 20% of the companies think about relocating, given some of the economic environmental issues, and this is clearly one of them.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
So we would see a brain drain out of Canada then with regard to the biotech sector, because that's a huge number of people. Not only that, if you take those types of players out of the market and universities and everything else, that would have an impact also, would it not?
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
What do we have to do in Canada to make sure it becomes the place to be of the biotech sector? How do we make this the place to look at? If you look at this deal for example, CETA is unique. It gives us market access to the U.S. and Europe and with TPP coming down the road hopefully, we'll see unfettered access into the Asian market. To me that's a great place to locate, but what other things do we think we need to do to make Canada the place to locate?
5:10 p.m.
Chair, Board of Directors, LifeSciences British Columbia
How much time do we have this afternoon?
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
I've got seven minutes. I've got a couple of questions for Stan too.
5:10 p.m.
Chair, Board of Directors, LifeSciences British Columbia
I'll just say two things and then ask Paul to comment.
It is critical that we are consistently looking at the sort of economic drivers like the ones that are included in CETA. Not to go too far off topic, but some of the elements of the Jenkins report—for example, looking at focusing our economic incentives toward real commercially based research and development—are very encouraging. There are a lot of things to do, but there's no question that we have a strong industry that's based on strong initially publicly supported research, and this is the commercial output of that. We need to continue to strengthen the industry.
5:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, LifeSciences British Columbia
I'll touch on a few things. One is something like looking at commercialization, I think that was the right way to go, $100 million; show me you're going to commercialize in three years and we'll invest. That was a great program, and we'll see how that plays out.
The other thing is that we need to get rid of some redundancies. There is redundancy in the system if you look at the regulatory front. We need to speed up regulatory approval so that's clarified—
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
5:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, LifeSciences British Columbia
I think there's an opportunity for us to go through the regulatory collaboration for biotech and address that issue through that. If you look at the timelines, we're almost a year slower than the FDA, and I think the number is around 267 days slower than the EU in approving products. So that's step one.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
You're going to have to speed up. We've only got five more minutes, and I have a few more questions for Stan.
5:10 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, LifeSciences British Columbia
And then the other piece is redundancy in price regulations. We have both the common and the provincial drug review, so we need to try to streamline that as well. Those would be two important issues to increase the sector.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Okay.
Mr. Van Keulen, it was great to listen to your presentation today. I'm curious, how many cows are culled in the dairy sector every year? You must have an idea.
5:10 p.m.
Board Member, British Columbia Dairy Association
Thirty per cent are culled every year.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
So it'll have market access now into Europe. It would be unique because it's all hormone-free, is that correct?
5:10 p.m.
Board Member, British Columbia Dairy Association
Do you want me to answer that?
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
To the best of your ability.
But that is a unique opportunity that you didn't have before. And I know one thing that we—
5:10 p.m.
Board Member, British Columbia Dairy Association
Most of our cull cows go down into the United States right now from British Columbia, and the ones locally all go into hamburger. Thank you, McDonald's, you guys are doing a good job.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
Randy Hoback Conservative Prince Albert, SK
That's been the historical trade pattern, going north to south now. The country of origin labelling creates all sorts of other interesting things, which we won't touch on here because we'll talk about CETA, but I just look at that.
And then I also look at...you said you had a couple of sons coming back into the sector. I'm curious, you said there are about 502 producers doing about $570 million approximately, give or take. How many producers did you have 10 years ago?
