Thank you, Cate.
Good day, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much for inviting us to participate today.
As you know through your work on this committee, the world economy is undergoing a fundamental transition that has the potential to surpass the impact of the industrial revolution. Characterized by the decline of traditional industries, rapid technology change, and even more rapid technology convergence, this transition impacts all sectors.
As a result, like all industrialized nations, Canada faces both threats and opportunities to its economic well-being and quality of life. The key driver of economic prosperity will be knowledge-based innovation.
Increasingly ours is a bio-economy. Biotechnology, both in the traditional sense and as it impacts diverse sectors, has been identified as galvanizing one-third of the global economy. Biotechnology is amongst the most innovative in Canada. We contribute more than 12% of the total national business expenditure on research and development, a remarkable achievement when one considers that our companies typically employ fewer than 50 people and they have yet to realize profits.
The impact of biotechnology far exceeds the number of companies traditionally grouped in this sector. Biotech industrial innovation impacts the service sector in hundreds of ways. From health care to agriculture, transportation to construction, along with more traditional industrial and manufacturing enterprises, all today have the potential to benefit from innovations in biotechnology, and they have a stake in the success of future innovations.
Canadians are inventing new models of value creation as well. Public-private partnerships such as the Centre for Drug Research and Development in Vancouver, the Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon, the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research in Toronto and other similar ventures across the country represent new attempts to translate public investment in basic research into downstream economic and social benefit.
At the same time as biotechnology-based organizations are knowledge and research intensive, their financing, development as companies, and fundamental ability to create value depend upon, and in turn contribute to, economic prosperity in dozens of service sectors--legal, financial, market research, and general consulting, to name a few.
Given Canada's acknowledged expertise in biotechnologies, the challenge is to leverage our investments in research so as to enable innovative companies to grow and sustain themselves here. Economic opportunity, including the jobs of today and future jobs across the service and industrial sectors, are at stake if we don't.