Finance committee  Yes, most of them are.

Finance committee  Yes, in the sense that.... I think what the government did was really smart. In the early days, if you recall, as I said in my opening remarks, it was seen to be that vaccines would be three to five years away based on the Ebola experience. We sort of knew that was going to be t

Finance committee  That's from a manufacturing standpoint. It would be like champagne and 7 Up being clear liquids that are bubbly. You put them in bottles and you drink them out of glasses. That's where the similarity ends. You cannot ask Moët to make 7 Up, and you can't ask 7 Up to make Moët. The

Finance committee  I know it just in manufacturing.

Finance committee  I think that's a really important question. Let's hope there is not another pandemic, but I think it would be foolish not to prepare for it. I think the government is recognizing that and putting some different investments there. The insulin example is a good one, reflecting bac

Finance committee  That's a very important question. I think what also happened a decade or so ago was that the industry itself changed. They changed the way they developed drugs. It used to be that a Pfizer or GlaxoSmithKline or Merck or whatever it was would do everything in-house for itself. Now

Finance committee  There are a couple of parts to this answer. We have significant capacity in Canada to manufacture vaccines. There was a bit of a misunderstanding early on. We did not have the capacity to manufacture mRNA vaccines. Those were the first ones that came out, and that's a new technol

Finance committee  The gaps we've seen.... The budget goes a long way to identifying those and starting to address them as well. Some of the primary gaps are always going to be the same for the sector, and there are two main ones. One is investment capital and access to investment. It's very expe

Finance committee  Again, it's another really important area. If you look at our membership, you see that we have industrial, environmental and agricultural biotech companies in our membership as well, and they're really providing solutions that address some of those exact challenges that you're t

Finance committee  Yes, definitely. If you look across the country, it's an industry, as I indicated at the outset, that has clusters in every single province, usually built around universities or research institutes. It builds on the infrastructure we've already put in place and the investments

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you very much to the committee for this important and very timely opportunity for BIOTECanada. By way of introduction, BIOTECanada is the national association that represents Canada's biotech industry. We have some 240 members across the country i

Industry committee  I seem to be alone. I think the task force was strong. I think they did great work. I'm not convinced we need to amend it. I don't think the pool is deep and wide enough in Canada to avoid some of what are perceived to be conflicts of interest. But—

Industry committee  Can we add more? Absolutely, but I think your focus is entirely correct. We have to start to look forward in the immediate future with the variants and the mutations, and then prepare for the longer term, and—

Industry committee  That's beyond my expertise. It points to the bigger question, though, in terms of fill and finish and distribution. Getting all those logistics in order is going to be absolutely critical. We can have the science, we can have the technology and we can develop the vaccines, but t

Industry committee  It has. I think Canada has to recognize that it's in a globally competitive industry, so it has to adopt policies that are actually going to allow the industry to compete globally and to also participate here. It's part of why we have seen a little bit of the industry disappear