I think that's a really important question. Let's hope there is not another pandemic, but I think it would be foolish not to prepare for it. I think the government is recognizing that and putting some different investments there.
The insulin example is a good one, reflecting back to my opening comments, in that the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin is now being celebrated. It is now the bedrock of a company called Novo Nordisk, which is based in Denmark. I would argue that if we do everything correctly here in Canada, whatever today's insulin is should be the “Canadadisk” or whatever. We should have that anchor company. That should be a large multinational company that's based here. I think we need to do that right.
The investments in some of the public programs, like the NRC's industrial research assistance program, or IRAP, are absolutely critical to a lot of the early-stage companies. Most of our early-stage companies point to IRAP, SR&ED.... All of those sorts of investments through programming are absolutely critical to their early-stage development. A number of companies today would point back to their history and say that this was critical in their development.
I think the one important thing to remember though, in terms of investing for facilities going forward for a future pandemic, is that in between crises they have to be active. You cannot mothball them, put paper on the windows. plastic on the doors, turn the lights out and then only come back for the next crisis. You have to think of it like an Olympic athlete. They don't sit on the couch drinking beer and eating chips in between the Olympics. They train. You have to do the same thing with our infrastructure.
If we're going to invest in infrastructure, it needs to be commercial. It can support the ecosystem. It can support research and development, early-stage companies, and be commercial at the same time. When the next crisis comes, it's up to code, it has the right people in the facility and it's ready to go. I think that's an absolutely critical part of what we're going do if we're going to develop biomanufacturing capacity in this country.