I will respond by talking about our role in Quebec as well as Canada.
We do our work two ways. Over the past 10 years, we have invested $2 billion in pure venture capital. We do this indirectly by investing in funds.
One of those funds is Lumira Capital, a Toronto-based biotechnology and life sciences fund.
In our field, you often hear about “lead order”. Even in tough times, we have always been there. Our consistent activity in the life sciences sector has enabled the sector to thrive in Quebec and Canada. In Lumira Capital's case, we invested $35 million in a $125-million fund. We were the lead order. The people at Lumira will tell you that without our investment, the company would not have managed to raise $125 million.
That has knock-on effects. Lumira Capital itself then invested $20 million or $25 million in a Vancouver company called Zymeworks, which is in cancer research. We ourselves invested directly in Zymeworks with the help of Lumira Capital. You often hear about a multiplier effect on the order of four to one or five to one for the investment we made.
We have been investing directly in the life sciences sector for about 20 years. The FTQ's Fonds de solidarité was an investor shareholder in BioChem Pharma, which had discovered an HIV drug at the time, a drug that has saved hundreds of thousands of lives around the world.
Following our success with BioChem, we have steadily invested close to $1 billion—$950 million—over the past 20 years in the life sciences sector. BioChem is a good example. There are plenty of other good examples that have propelled the biotechnology sector forward not just in Quebec but across Canada in collaboration with funds in Toronto, Vancouver, and elsewhere.
I don't know a lot of institutional investors that have committed $2 billion in pure venture capital over the past 10 years.