Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.
My name is Oliver Technow. I am the CEO of BioVectra, a contract development and manufacturing organization headquartered here in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. Also joining me is Dr. Sauer, BioVectra’s chief science officer and a 20-year veteran of the sector, who is leading the charge on our mRNA vaccine and biomanufacturing expansion. I have 30-plus years of global pharmaceutical industry leadership experience, having lived and worked in Europe, the United States and Canada.
My company is a leading Canadian CDMO, with 17 of our clients being among the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies. Overall, we serve more than 100 clients. We produce active pharmaceutical ingredients, and as a full service CDMO, we support our clients globally to develop and produce pharmaceuticals and therapies, making a huge difference in the lives of patients. We have a 50-year track record, with beginnings as a start-up company that was the brainchild of Dr. Regis Duffy, former dean of science here at UPEI. Today we have 600 employees and five state-of-the-art facilities in both Charlottetown and Windsor, Nova Scotia, certified by Health Canada, U.S. FDA and the Japanese PMDA.
A key to the global competitiveness of our businesses is that we are continuously investing in expanding our capabilities in terms of offering end-to-end services, from clinical development all the way to commercial manufacturing. We announced in November a $79.6-million expansion of our business to produce mRNA vaccines and therapeutics, with the Government of Canada contributing $39.8 million through the strategic innovation fund and a $10-million investment from the Province of Prince Edward Island. This is a natural next step for our company, as we have decades of experience in making very closely related molecules.
Our expansion includes constructing a cutting-edge biomanufacturing facility here in Charlottetown, creating a single-use clinical scale suite in Windsor, Nova Scotia, and opening an R and D facility in Halifax. We just broke ground, and when completed in 2023, BioVectra will be able to produce up to 160 million doses of mRNA vaccine per year, with the capability to commercially package, or fill and finish, 70 million doses. Through this expansion, we will add at least 125 new jobs in the sector, generate research partnerships and development opportunities for life sciences and biomanufacturing professionals, and create 225 co-op terms for students.
CDMOs like ours are ideally positioned to offer the flexibility needed to respond to the next pandemic, because we have developed platforms that can produce many types of products for many biopharmaceutical companies. We have specialized talent in research and development, engineering, business development, quality and manufacturing, which are needed to support the end-to-end life cycle of drug production and manufacturing.
Over the last several years, Canada has made significant investments in the infrastructure and S and T capabilities needed to reinvigorate the country’s domestic biomanufacturing. I believe that to truly reinstate Canada as a biomanufacturing leader, we need to be nurturing an ecosystem that can sustain it over the long term, such as staying on par with other countries' investments into new technologies, which will remain crucial in attracting more global pharmaceutical companies to come to Canada. Also, I believe the focus now needs to shift from bricks-and-mortar investments towards building a more robust bioscience talent pipeline. Talent truly is the catalyst for a robust and globally competitive Canadian biomanufacturing sector, and we should be aiming really high to make Canada a prime talent destination.
The economic growth potential for this sector is enormous, and our ability to succeed or fail is contingent upon building, attracting and retaining our human capital. The first step that I see needed is to grow and retain top talent in the country. We need engineers, scientists and technicians who can see an attractive career path in the bioscience sector in Canada. We need to be targeting graduates from all academic levels and make the sector attractive by taking approaches such as offering transition-to-work opportunities and establishing more co-op student placements. This can be best solved through close collaboration and partnership between the private and public sector.
One good example of this is CASTL, the Canadian Alliance for Skills and Training in Life Sciences, headquartered here in Prince Edward Island. CASTL is the result of close collaboration between different levels of government, industry and academia, and it brings a world-class technical training curriculum to Canada as the exclusive partner of Ireland’s globally recognized National Institute for Bioprocessing Research and Training. BioVectra was involved in the development and is an early adopter of CASTL, which is a one-stop shop for our industry’s training and academic requirements.
I urge our decision-makers to create better conditions to attract talent from around the world so that they choose Canada as the destination to make their careers. I believe governments could play a leading role in adopting policies that streamline and speed up the immigration process to tackle the domestic talent gaps that we know are coming. They can create other options too, as other countries do, with, for example, personal income tax incentives, which have proven to be quite successful.
Our experience has been that to attract international talent, you need to offer an attractive place to live. I would like to see our leaders continue to work swiftly to create conditions that make Canada that place—conditions such as improving immediate access to health care, child care and middle-income home ownership.
A lesson from the pandemic that we need to keep at the forefront is to nurture and sustain Canada's domestic biomanufacturing capability, which will help prepare Canada to pivot and respond quickly to the next global crisis.
Thank you.