Life Sciences Forum

Project Overview 

As Canada emerges from the pandemic-related crises and prepares for future health threats, it is clear that investments are needed now to ensure the country’s health security. Whereas Canada was able to leverage its global alliances, existing capabilities, and current life sciences assets in an ad hoc manner during the COVID-19 pandemic, it behooves us to proactively and systematically determine how Canada can become part of the global solution to health threats, and what Canada can add to domestic and global supply chains, and how we can operate from a position of strength in the face of future threats and crises. 

The Life Sciences Forum’s core objective is to establish a space for ongoing dialogue and collaboration between the life sciences sector and governments to raise Canada’s level of preparedness and health security.  

As an initial step, we engaged stakeholders in the Pharma Forum in November 2022, designed to build trust, identify interventions for near-term progress towards building a stronger baseline of health security in Canada and establish the structures and processes to enable productive lines of ongoing dialogue between pharma/life sciences and governments.  

After initial discussions with stakeholders across the life sciences ecosystem, evidence indicates that the challenge of resilience requires focus on three initial priorities:

1. Strategic supply chains that elevate security of supply among allies
2. Developing health data strategies that provide information about disease trends, risks, and other public health interventions; and
3. Improving time to access to medicines and vaccines for Canadians.  

The Life Sciences Forum was created with the following areas of concentration for discussion and intervention:   

1. Establishing a partnership between the life sciences sector and governments to increase the health security of Canadians and their protection.  
2. Creating the conditions to encourage investments in life sciences assets and IP that promote domestic resilience, preparedness and international leadership.  
3. Collaborating to accelerate patient access to treatments & provide the data and digital health infrastructure to identify & implement improved health outcomes.