Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members.
I am going to give my presentation in English, but I would be pleased to answer any questions in French, if you like.
Mr. Chairman, on behalf of Genome Canada, I'm pleased to tell you about our priorities and activities and offer some thoughts on Canada's intellectual property regime, especially in regard to the field of genomics-based research, development, and commercialization.
Genome Canada is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to developing and applying genomics that create economic wealth and social benefit for Canadians. We work in partnership with our six regional genome centres and with government, academia, and industry. This network is the Canadian Genomics Enterprise. We invest in and manage large-scale research and translate discoveries into commercial opportunities, new technologies, applications, and solutions in key life science sectors of the economy. Those sectors include health, agriculture, environment, energy, mining, fisheries, and forestry.
We continue to consider the economic, ethical, environmental, legal, social, and other challenges and opportunities related to genomics research and development. We do this to provide understanding that speeds the acceptance and uptake of innovations into society. Since the year 2000, fulfilling our mandate has resulted in $1 billion committed by the Government of Canada. In turn, this has leveraged a further $1 billion in co-funding over the same period.
Our achievements include a strong focus on commercialization. Since our inception, more than 20 SMEs have been created or enhanced; more than 200 patent applications filed, with 52 patents issued; and more than 20 commercial licence agreements negotiated with the private sector. In all our endeavours, our funded researchers and partners are encouraged to use their best efforts to ensure intellectual property is exploited to maximize the benefits for Canada and Canadians. This means both economic and social benefits.
Considering the role of intellectual property protection in the field of genomics begins with the clear understanding of how our innovation system works.
Innovation is a process. It's a complex one and has increasingly become a collaborative venture. Its key element is translation, which is moving from idea to invention, invention to product, and from product to business. Innovation frequently involves public sector funders, university-based researchers, and private sector entrepreneurs working together in teams and consortia.
These teams often cross national boundaries and operate often in a so-called “precompetitive” modus operandi. For innovation to flourish in such a complex environment, a number of policies and practices must be in place, and intellectual property protection is one of them. Intellectual property protection always involves creating a balance between protecting the economic rights of creators and providing public access to their inventions.
In today's world, IP protection is one of the keys to innovation, which drives productivity, and as a result has become an important competitive tool between national economies. Countries with strong IP protection attract the most entrepreneurial researchers and the kinds of investments that lead to jobs, products, and markets. Countries with weaker IP regimes often see those benefits go elsewhere.
We need Canada to have a level playing field to encourage investment from elsewhere. The more level the playing field is for intellectual property protection, the more freely capital, ideas, and skilled knowledge workers will flow.
In addition, we must work harder to encourage more homegrown intellectual property development and exploitation. That's a complex undertaking involving much more than IP issues. It also touches venture capital, innovation models, risk management, and a whole lot more.
Intellectual property rights entice entrepreneurial researchers and inventors to take risks in the expectation of economic rewards in their quest to develop new drugs, better diagnostic tests, more resilient crops, and so on. In the field of genomics, where large data sets are produced and stored, the balance between sharing this data openly and protecting potential value is critical in harnessing the value of publicly funded research.
Increasingly, members of the collective research community opt to place results of their work in the public domain. This provides all interested parties with fundamental knowledge and enables others to continue research that truly can benefit the world community and improve commercial prospects.
That is the approach taken by the Structural Genomics Consortium, for example, of which Genome Canada is a foundational funder. The SGC is one of the largest-ever public-private research partnerships, representing more than 200 scientists working in labs ranging from university labs to some of the largest pharmaceutical labs in the world, all of whom openly share their early-stage results. The goal is to speed novel and effective drug discovery by identifying suitable molecular targets in a high throughput mode. The result is a new approach to intellectual property rights that allows drug makers and university scientists to share risks and reduce costs at a stage of research deemed precompetitive by the stakeholders.
In this manner, the speed of knowledge creation is maximized, and the companies involved compete further down the value chain.
Genome Canada recently published a brief entitled “Moving Beyond Commercialization: Strategies to Maximize the Economic and Social Impact of Genomics Research”. I have a few copies here if people are interested.
The authors are leading experts in intellectual property, technology transfer, and public policy. They argue that commercial success alone is inadequate to measure intangible assets such as the scientific knowledge, entrepreneurial experience, and industry collaboration that are necessary ingredients for economic growth. The point is that as important as intellectual property protection is in creating a supportive framework for genomics research and innovation, it is just one element of that framework.
To this end, we have been in ongoing discussions with the Government of Canada seeking financial support for multi-year programming. Specifically, we are seeking up front a federal commitment of $440 million to support four years of genomics-based research and development. Because of our ability to leverage federal funding through partners and transform discovery into real benefits, this would lead to a net investment for Canada of $1.2 billion in genomics research and development over the next four years. That's a 1:2 leverage of federal dollars.
This long-term, stable, effective, multi-year funding is essential to underscore Canada's commitment to an emerging bioeconomy and to show how genomics innovation can preserve and create jobs, boost productivity, and develop value-added products and markets.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your attention.