Thank you, dear members of the Standing Committee of Science and Research.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I will begin by acknowledging that I am speaking to you from the traditional, ancestral and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations.
As president and CEO of STEMCELL Technologies, I welcome the opportunity to speak with members about the contributions STEMCELL is making for the Canadian science and research ecosystem.
STEMCELL Technologies is Canada's largest biotechnology company, with over 1,700 employees globally, of whom 1,200 are located in British Columbia. Research-focused, we make products that support the life sciences, including some of the ingredients that go into COVID tests and vaccines.
Since its founding in 1993, the company has always been profitable, with an average annual growth rate of 20%. This year, sales revenues will exceed $400 million. Export-oriented, 97% of our sales are outside of Canada, bringing in those export dollars that are two to three times more valuable than dollars generated within an economy.
At our present growth rate, sales will be $2 billion in 10 years. To manage this growth, we need to hire and train 4,000 new employees. Most require further on-job training, and they will have to take some of the 500 educational courses we offer internally in our company. This helps mitigate the shortage of people with biomanufacturing training in Canada. That said, STEMCELL benefits from countries like Ireland, which has a national biopharma training program. Presently, STEMCELL has over 80 Irish graduates, most of whom have that training and have worked in biopharma in Ireland.
STEMCELL is known globally for the novelty and quality of its products, which we research, design and make in Vancouver. In addition, we market products made by other companies. With thousands of customers globally, over 3,000 products are used for research in cell therapy, regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, immunotherapy and gene therapy.
Initially, our products were for research use only. Now, many of our products are in clinical trials with the expectation that they will be used in patients. To make clinical products, STEMCELL sought federal support to build the required facilities. Thus, in 2017, we had a loan of $22.5 million from the federal scientific innovation fund, which was matched by the Province of British Columbia. This $45 million was then matched 2:1 by STEMCELL with a $90 million loan from a bank consortium. This $138 million project, called “project railway”, is nearing a successful completion, with the creation of 675 biomanufacturing jobs.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has again highlighted Canada's dependence on foreign suppliers, this time for making the ingredients for viral testing and vaccines. STEMCELL has made a SIF proposal called “project bedrock” to make these ingredients. This has been submitted with the understanding that matching funding will come from British Columbia. Committee members present are asked to remind our colleagues in government that this investment is aligned with Canada's biomanufacturing and life sciences strategy to improve Canada's long-term pandemic resilience.
In conclusion, we are grateful that the federal government has made supporting biomanufacturing a priority. However, it should be noted that the leading G7 nations—the United States, Germany and Japan—each spend over 3% of their GDP on research. Canada spends half of this at 1.7% of GDP. STEMCELL suggests that it is imperative that Canada spends more on Canadian research-oriented businesses if we are to remain competitive with our G7 colleagues, as well as with China.
I thank members for this opportunity to address the committee today, and I look forward to answering any questions you may have.