In Canadian policy, there is a bit of an obsession with small and medium-sized enterprises, which is fine; we need to help small companies get established. A lot of the large companies that are vilified are in this protected sector, and maybe that's why they're vilified. I say that having avoided a five-hour delay on Air Canada by flying Porter yesterday.
The difficulty is in helping provide policy frameworks. The biotech industry is a particularly pointed example, because it's the policy of large multinational pharma companies to buy IP from small companies. They've long since abandoned doing a lot of their own research. They let others do their own research, typically with government support, especially in Canada. Then they simply buy it if it's a successful thing, or they create an agreement—which I've seen over and over again in Vancouver—where they'll give a lot of money to get a potential drug through phase one clinical trials. The founders will say, “That's great—lots of money”, but of course the sting in the tail is that if they're successful at phase one clinical trials and it looks like they really have something profitable, they're told, “You're our company now.” I think that's creating the environment....
Biotech is completely about intellectual property and about patent protection in particular. It's great that we protect the patents, but if we don't allow companies to succeed in Canada, then we know where the patents go. They get sold to some big multinational, which then develops the technology and makes the profits from it.