Honourable Wayne Easter and members of the committee, good morning. It is a privilege to welcome you to Prince Edward Island, and to welcome a couple of you back to Prince Edward Island, and to offer comments on economic infrastructure as you carry out your consultations.
As Penny has indicated, one of the main themes we are looking at is innovative economic infrastructure in the province. That is my purpose here today. With me today is Martin Yuill. Martin is the director of incubation for the PEI BioAlliance and head of the Emergence bioscience business incubator program.
The Prince Edward Island BioAlliance was incorporated as a private sector-led not-for-profit in 2005 to coordinate and accelerate the development of the P.E.I. bioscience cluster. Since that time, the BioAlliance has been the catalyst in aligning the efforts of government partners, research and academic organizations, and bioscience business leaders to build a new economic pillar for the province and, indeed, for the Atlantic region. Since the incorporation of the BioAlliance, the bioscience industry in Prince Edward Island has grown from 16 companies to more than 45. Private sector revenue has tripled to more than $200 million in export sales, and employment in the sector has risen from about 450 jobs to more than 1,500 jobs.
About half the companies in the cluster are locally grown from early entrepreneurial efforts, and we witnessed one being discussed this morning—BioVectra. The other half of them are from other parts of Canada and the world. We are home to business units of three multinationals, all of which are here because they invested in local small and medium-sized enterprises, and they continue to invest. Our companies produce human, animal, and fish health products, including cosmetic ingredients, natural health products, feed additives, vaccines, diagnostics, and pharmaceuticals.
Early on, we recognized, as others have, that Canada needed to improve its commercialization efforts from new technologies developed in academia and the start-up companies. This has been a core part of our development strategy: to become a Canadian leader in commercialization. We’ve done this through our collaborative partnership model. As a result, we have established a winning environment for early-stage businesses in P.E.I.
Key partners in our cluster, which support strategic implementation and business growth in a variety of ways, include: Holland College; the University of Prince Edward Island and other regional universities such as Dalhousie, Mount Allison, UNB, and St. Francis Xavier, etc.; Innovation PEI; the NRC; Ag Canada research; ACOA; and NSERC.
With our recent successes in two important federal competitions—the Canadian accelerator and incubator program and the Centres of Excellence for Commercialization and Research—we have established both the Emergence Bioscience Business Incubator and Natural Products Canada. These entities are exponentially increasing business development and business attraction opportunities and are assisting in building our reputation in Canada and the world as an innovation leader with the experience and infrastructure to commercialize new products and new ideas.
One of the consequences we are now facing is that we are exceeding the capacity of our incubation and acceleration infrastructure in the province, in the region, and in Canada. This is, as you can appreciate, a good consequence. We must, as an urgent priority, establish strategic infrastructure—something that Penny also mentioned—including laboratory, manufacturing, and scale-up facilities and the services necessary to exploit this opportunity and grow our economy.
I chair the multi-stakeholder steering committee of the BioAlliance, which has worked for the past few years on the conceptual design and business plan for a solution to our space and service needs. The solution is what we call the “centre for bioscience commercialization” or, simply, the “BioAccelerator”.
It is a 70,000-square-foot facility that incorporates technical and business services, accelerator space for early-stage businesses, and manufacturing space that allows companies to scale to global markets. It would be located at the BioCommons Research Park in Prince Edward Island. The current cost estimate is $38 million. Its construction will allow for the establishment of 30 new companies within the cluster and the capacity to initiate commercialization and ultimately lead to expansion of stand-alone facilities across the province, the region, and Canada.
The BioAccelerator will be part of Canada's national innovation connectivity, supporting new product development and commercialization in biosciences. There is no reason why Canada can't be a leading nation in the manufacturing of innovative science-based products. Our competitive advantages are our people and infrastructure. We have spent significant dollars on research and innovative institutions. We now need to commercialize these innovations and reap the economic rewards in this country.
Our request today is that the federal government ensure that strategic economic infrastructure, such as the BioAccelerator, is a priority for funding under phase two of the federal infrastructure program. Infrastructure such as the BioAccelerator, when placed in the midst of a successful cluster partnership, will ensure that the federal government achieves a full return on its investment of public funds. It supports Canada's innovation agenda, enables commercialization of technologies for global markets, attracts talented immigrants, increases foreign direct investment, and mobilizes Canadian capital for investment in Canadian business.
We wish to thank you today for your time. I would be pleased to answer any questions you might have. Thank you.