I'd just like to speak about some aspects of the commercialization of research. I've spent 30-some years of my life in academia and then switched in my declining years to the private sector. It's an interesting time these days, obviously.
What we have in Canada is really quite a well-funded research program across the universities, in government, industry, and the private sector. Where we are really very weak and we have been missing the opportunity is in commercializing home run kinds of technologies that come up. I'll give you one quick example. In the mid 1980s, Doctor Harold Copp at UBC discovered a compound called calcitonin for treatment of osteoporosis in post-menopausal women. Doctor Copp wasn't motivated to commercialize that compound, yet it's by far, even today, one of the most effective compounds for treatment of osteoporosis, and it's been sold with sales of billions of dollars per year for many years. Think what would have happened if we had commercialized that. There are very similar discoveries across the country, and the challenge is how we can identify these home runs at an early stage and utilize them for the development of additional Canadian industry.
We have a suggestion on how we might do that, and I'll turn this over to my colleague to discuss this.