Health committee  Yes, it's exactly that. For any given disease, especially more complex diseases—cancer, epilepsy, autism, some of these more complex diseases—we're understanding that it's just not one disease, it's many diseases. Through the genome, we can classify whether people are type 1, type 2, type 3, type 4, or whatever stratification they lie in.

Health committee  In terms of patenting genetic information, I believe that Canada lies between Europe and the United States. As you know, even in the United States there are High Court rulings that are in waiting as related to patents on breast cancer genes and other genes that have been patented in the U.S.

Health committee  Please do.

Health committee  On the personalized health competition?

Health committee  This $150-million amount of money was gathered through different funding sources, including CIHR. CIHR put in over $20 million, we put in $45 million, and provincial governments put in a lot of money. Pharmaceutical companies are joining some of these projects, so there's private sector money in that $150-million pot.

Health committee  I think the situation that exists in the U.S. and other countries that have adopted new legislation on genetic information discrimination is quite different than Canada's. Canadians are, in my view, well protected. I know that some will disagree with me, but I don't think we need to change the law.

Health committee  Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, members of the committee. I will give my presentation in English, but I would be glad to answer questions in French, if you'd like, during the question period. Members of the committee, on behalf of Genome Canada I'm very pleased to contribute to your study of technological innovation, including best practices, in health care in Canada.

Industry committee  It requires excellent science, which we have in Canada. There are now loads of reports that say we punch above our weight in terms of how good we are at research. It's the rest of the continuum that we're concerned about. How risky does the VC community think we are? We know that we're risk-averse, so it's very difficult to get that first round of capital into a small SME that has some interesting stuff to do.

Industry committee  I think there are ways. I believe a sector-specific analysis can help us here. It's self-serving, I know; we're in genomics, so we're very interested in bioeconomy. Canada has a huge footprint in forests, fish, agriculture, etc. The OECD said that the future bioeconomy is going to be 4% of GDP in OECD countries by 2030.

Industry committee  I very much agree with Chris. It's a brilliant question, because I think it hits on a key issue in terms of how we maximize what comes out. We run large-scale projects, and each one is $10 million over four years. The principal investigator might be very interested in publishing his best work, but might not necessarily be the person who is going to recognize an opportunity for commercialization.

Industry committee  It goes a little bit back to what I was talking about in terms of the precompetitive space. You're sharing knowledge across a number of groups. They can be from the private sector or from the public sector. You're sharing it, so everybody agrees from the outset that they will not file any intellectual property on the common knowledge resource that's being created in that project.

Industry committee  That's a great question. Thank you. In general, in genomics research there's a huge amount of data being created. There's a big case at the moment in the U.S. Supreme Court around the Myriad breast cancer gene that you might have heard about, and whatever way that's going to come down, the value of actually patenting a gene these days is very low.

Industry committee  I think we need a balanced approach for SR and ED regarding direct versus indirect. That balance in not going one way or the other is important.

Industry committee  The best way to explain is through an example, as you suggested. The first one is the Structural Genomics Consortium, which started with one pharmaceutical company joining a high-throughput technology-driven arrangement led by a Canadian researcher and linking up with the Wellcome Trust Fund, a group in Oxford University.

Industry committee  It's critical. Just to give you one example, we don't usually run training programs or educational programs—we fund projects—but because of the lack of entrepreneurship in this country, we put a pilot project together to fund an entrepreneur-oriented educational genomics program that gives interface between young entrepreneurs coming from the business schools and our genomics projects.