Professor Evenett pointed this out as well. Sometimes having a robust pharmaceutical industry doesn't necessarily insulate you from the difficulties that can occur as a result of a global pandemic. Clearly, it's helpful for your public health policy. It's also helpful for your economy, but that said, these things are extremely difficult to predict, and they're very difficult to manage in practice.
However, in terms of getting more infrastructure into the country, here I'll express a little bit of frustration, because there's a room somewhere at Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada that is filled with reports about life sciences innovation over the years. Most recently, we had one which was put out by the health and biosciences economic strategy table, HBEST, in late 2018, by a group of industry, academia and government officials.
The deputy minister of health and the deputy minister of ISED participated. They put out a report on how to build a life sciences sector with greater capacity in Canada. It related not just to IP but also talked about regulatory barriers, taxation, labour skills, etc. It was a great report. Since the report came out, not much has happened.
We have a history in Canada of thinking very long and hard about life sciences innovation, but we don't really do very much. We don't implement our great thoughts. A good starting point would be to go back to HBEST, revisit that and implement some of its recommendations. That in and of itself will not necessarily, as Professor Evenett pointed out, yield direct benefits in terms of a pandemic vaccine, but it would create more infrastructure and capacity within the country in the medium to long term.