A Strategic Blueprint to Cure Canada's Innovation Paralysis in Life Sciences

Executive Summary

Canada excels at funding world-class life sciences research but struggles with commercialization. While our country ranks second in the G7 for higher-education R&D, our business R&D investment sits near the bottom of the G7 at 0.9% of GDP, compared to 2.7% in the United States [Statistics Canada; NSF NCSES]. Over a 15-year period, 21 Canadian life sciences companies were acquired by foreign buyers for over $500 million each, and of the investors who saw returns from the top 20 therapeutic exits, only 23% were Canadian [adMare Institute, 2025]. That is a count of investors, not a share of the money. Further up the chain, of the disclosed limited partners behind the funds that financed those exits, 81% were American and 6% Canadian; these too are counts, from partial disclosure, and directional [adMare Institute, 2025]. The largest exits went abroad: seven of the top 20, each a foreign acquisition of more than US$1 billion (including Chinook by Novartis, Fusion by AstraZeneca and Bellus by GSK), accounted for about 71% of the total value of those exits [adMare Institute, 2025]. This structural gap is driven by a chronic scale-up capital deficit and regulatory and reimbursement bottlenecks that lead to extensive capital and intellectual property (IP) leakage.

To break this cycle, this blueprint delivers a coordinated, eight-reform priority package. It requires no new discovery funding, focusing instead on anchoring capital, matching international tax incentives, and transforming the public healthcare system into an active first customer. The reforms are chosen for leverage and listed in the order a company meets them; their engine is the anchor stage, where Canadian capital keeps companies, and the returns they generate, in Canada.

Beyond the priority package, the Reform Catalogue in Part 3 follows a company through the three valleys of financing: from the lab to a fundable company, through scale-up, and to the anchor stage of listing and staying Canadian-owned, where Canada has lost many of its most valuable life sciences companies.

The Priority Package at a Glance

1. Streamlined Licensing, Venture Philanthropy and IP Retention (Modules 3A.1, 3A.9, 3A.3): Phases in the Simple Agreement for Innovation Licensing (SAIL), an express university licence, from voluntary adoption by Canadian universities, to federal and provincial top-ups for adopters, to a condition of Tri-Agency funding once the data show it works; seeds a national venture philanthropy fund that recycles its returns into the next cohort of spinouts; and attaches incentive-based IP-retention terms, support first and conditions second, to public capital in this package, so Canadian discoveries start, and stay, on Canadian terms.

2. Anchor-Aligned Capital Gains Exemption (Module 3B.1): Introduces a 0% inclusion rate (capped at $15M per business) for long-held small business stock in life sciences and deep tech to compete against the 0% U.S. QSBS rate, with the full benefit for gains realized through a Canadian listing or a sale to a Canadian buyer, and a reduced benefit when the exit is a foreign acquisition.

3. A Late-Stage Life Sciences Growth Window (Module 3C.1): Builds on the October 2026 Venture and Growth Capital Plan, through a life sciences sleeve in its $675 million later and growth stage stream alongside the $200 million VCCI life sciences stream, with new money if needed, so domestic funds can lead $50M-plus growth rounds with fund lives suited to clinical timelines.

4. Tiered SR&ED Credits for Clinical Trials (Module 3E.6): Extends the enhanced 35% SR&ED tax credit, on a refundable basis for Canadian-controlled companies, to clinical trials run at Canadian sites, from Phase I through postmarketing Phase IV, with a basic credit for foreign sponsors' Canadian trials and repayment if credit-funded IP leaves Canada, to reverse Canada's declining share of global trials.

5. Domestic Capital Compact (Modules 3D.3, 3D.2): A voluntary, Tibi-style compact in which pension funds and other institutional investors pledge capital to labelled funds that back Canadian late-stage and listed life sciences companies, with a listed-company sleeve that can take cornerstone positions in Canadian IPOs.

6. Family and Philanthropic Capital Channel (Modules 3C.6, 3C.5): Brings family offices into the compact and the federal fund-of-funds on the same terms as pension funds, revives the capital gains exemption on donated private shares, lets foundations count venture investments toward their disbursement quota, and pilots a capped innovation rollover for estates and business sales.

7. Total Economic Return Procurement Scoring (Module 3F.1): Deploys a 100-point balanced scorecard, adopted through dedicated federal funding for provinces that sign on, evaluating clinical net yield, supply chain resilience, and domestic R&D to shift provincial single-payers away from narrow cost-minimization.

8. Approved-but-Not-Pursued Exit Registry (Module 3G.1): Publishes an annual list of medicines approved in the United States or Europe but never filed in Canada, and requires sponsors whose approved therapies are not submitted for public reimbursement to file a short public reason, chosen from standard categories, with no confidential pricing or commercial strategy disclosed, so the access gap can be seen and fixed.

Implementation at a Glance

Part 4 sets out the rollout in four phases over about five years. The first six months are for steps that need no new legislation: phased licensing adoption, the investor compact, the interim Exit Registry, the outcome review of funded intermediaries and the regulatory readiness rule. From months 6 to 18, the tax measures go into the next federal budget and its Budget Implementation Act, and the new statutes are drafted and introduced. In years 1 to 3, the procurement, co-funding and health data measures start with willing provinces and territories. From year 2, the capital vehicles are deployed and a permanent coordinating authority takes over from the transitional Implementation Task Force. The phases mark when each step starts, not when it is finished: measures that need the provinces and territories, such as procurement scoring and health data, will take longer, and are designed to start with willing jurisdictions rather than wait for all of them.

Preamble

For over a century, Canada has been an exceptionally fertile ground for life sciences discovery. From the Nobel Prize-winning isolation of insulin at the University of Toronto in 1921 to the pioneering of global blockbusters like Visudyne and 3TC, our academic laboratories, clinical research networks, and public health systems have produced discoveries of global significance. Yet, the primary economic and social rewards of this innovation engine have gone elsewhere.

Canada does not have an invention problem; it has a scale conversion problem [BetaKit, 2017]. The Council of Canadian Academies found that Canada's business R&D gap persists within the same sectors, showing that industrial mix does not explain it [Council of Canadian Academies, 2013]. Many Canadian-invented patents do not result in Canadian-owned corporate assets: the share of U.S. patents with a Canadian inventor assigned directly to foreign firms on their date of issue more than doubled over a twenty-year horizon, reaching 45 percent [IRPP, 2019]. Policy is lopsided in the same way: support concentrates on start-ups and early-stage firms, while the missing middle, firms that grow to mid-size and lead a global niche, and the anchors they can become, receives little [Barber and Crelinsten, 2016].

The modern history of Canadian biotechnology is a vicious cycle of capital and intellectual property (IP) leakage [Council of Canadian Innovators, 2026]. We excel at subsidizing the high-risk, early-stage laboratory phase through non-dilutive public grants and specialized tax incentives [EY, 2026]. However, the moment a homegrown firm approaches its critical value inflection point—the transition into multi-centre Phase II and III clinical trials—it encounters a thin domestic capital market [CVCA, 2025; Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Sector Task Force, 2026]. The federal Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Sector Task Force described the same gap in its Report to the Ministers of Health and Industry, released in July 2026.

Because Canadian venture funds remain too small to write late-stage cheques without breaching concentration limits, and because our multi-trillion-dollar institutional pension asset managers allocate just ~18% of their public equity portfolios and ~3% of their total assets under management to domestic equities, our most promising firms face a structural disadvantage [Betermier, 2024; New Financial, 2024]. They are financially compelled to scale on foreign venture capital, cede control, and relocate their corporate headquarters to the United States or Europe.

This commercial flight is compounded by a public healthcare apparatus that operates predominantly as a closed buyer to domestic innovation. Legacy procurement systems reward the lowest upfront unit cost rather than system-wide clinical efficiency or domestic economic yield, while a slow, sequential federal-provincial review pipeline delays market entry. Only 48.5% of approved drugs are even submitted for public reimbursement review [Pharmaceutical Technology / GlobalData, 2026]. epiSign, a rare-disease diagnostic platform developed in London, Ontario, was in clinical use abroad for years before Ontario finally made it reimbursable for local patients in late 2025 [TechAlliance, 2025].

Part of the problem is how the system is seen. Health policy puts two different economies in the same box. The distribution economy buys and delivers care: drugs, devices, physicians and hospitals, and it is managed as a cost. The innovation economy creates the biotechnology, medical technology and health technology built on Canadian science, and it adds to GDP per capita, exports and tax revenue. When both are debated as one, every conversation turns to access and price, and the innovation economy gets a fraction of the attention and money. Health and life sciences are not treated as a national strategic and economic priority. This blueprint treats the innovation economy as one. Spending more on distribution has not bought more care. In 2024 Canada spent 11.5% of GDP on health, against an OECD average of 9.4%, yet had 2.7 physicians per 1,000 people against an OECD average of 4.1, and 10.4 MRI units per million people (OECD Health Statistics, 2026). In the Commonwealth Fund's 2023 survey of 10 high-income countries, only 26% of Canadians could get a same- or next-day appointment, the lowest of any country surveyed (Commonwealth Fund, 2024; CIHI, 2024).

The purpose of this policy blueprint is to break this cycle.

The structural interventions detailed in the following pages do not call for more discovery funding. Instead, they apply immediate, coordinated urgency to the execution, capitalization, procurement, and market-access milestones where Canada historically loses what it builds. By realigning our national tax code, mobilizing pension-scale late-stage capital, transforming the public healthcare system into an active first customer, and keeping control of Canadian champions in Canada, this framework builds a path of least resistance for scale.

Our country possesses the raw scientific material, world-class clinical capabilities, and underlying market liquidity required to build independent industrial pillars. This document provides the operational, legislative, and structural architecture to secure their growth.

How to Use This Blueprint

This policy blueprint functions as an integrated legislative and financial strategy. The document is divided into thematic parts that establish the problem, trace its structural origins, and map out isolated, standalone intervention modules:

1. The Executive Summary & Preamble: Establish the macro data, economic stakes, and narrative logic of the priority reforms.
2. Part 1: Diagnosis: Traces the empirical baseline of Canada's innovation leakage across corporate and academic life sciences channels.
3. Part 2: The Priority Package: Outlines the capital flywheel and the interconnected policy levers.
4. Part 3: The Reform Catalogue: Comprises detailed proposals (Modules 3A.1 to 3H.6) for legislative drafters, organized in eight sections that follow a company from the lab to the patient, including the three valleys of financing. Every module uses the same six fields: Problem, Proposal, Precedent, Evidence, Impact, and Points of Debate, so any module can be lifted into a brief, op-ed, or slide without rewriting.
5. Part 4: Implementation: Maps out the immediate 90-day phase-in steps and downstream operational horizons.
6. Part 5: References: Lists the sources cited throughout the text.

Policy officials can isolate single modules in Part 3 to stand up immediate programs, or follow the phased timeline in Part 4 to implement the priority package.

A note on interests: the author is the founder and CEO of Augmentios, a life sciences advisory firm. This blueprint is independent and self-funded; no organization commissioned or paid for it. Some proposals, such as clearer rules for introducers of capital (3C.7), concern fields in which advisory firms like Augmentios may work.

Part 1: Diagnosis

Canada has a scale conversion problem. We excel at funding world-class public research but fail at building independent anchor companies. While Canada ranks second in the G7 for higher-education R&D, our business R&D investment sits near the bottom of the G7 at 0.9% of GDP (compared to 2.7% in the United States).

The data proves this is not a sector-mix issue; it is a structural failure to scale.

The Core Evidence

Value Created Here, Captured Elsewhere

The pattern of Canada's life sciences sector is not failure; it is leakage.

1. The Inflection Point: Companies reach critical value thresholds using Canadian infrastructure, clinical expertise, and public tax credits.
2. The Foreign Pivot: Lacking large domestic growth funds, they scale on foreign venture capital, relocate their IP and executive leadership to the U.S. or Europe, and eventually sell out.
3. The Premium Buy-Back: A Council of Canadian Innovators (CCI) study found that 28 out of 30 acquired Canadian technology and life sciences firms lost strategic control post-acquisition. Canada effectively subsidizes the kitchen, lets foreign capital own the food, and then buys the finished pharmaceutical products back from foreign parents at a steep premium.

The Senate Banking Committee reached the same diagnosis in October 2026: a structural gap in scale-up capital, the "missing middle," leads Canadian firms to be "sold prematurely to foreign owners, and thereafter being relocated outside Canada." One witness put it plainly: "Canada is optimized for startup formation… Without stronger scale governance, Canada risks remaining a startup nursery for foreign anchor firms." His comparison, as cited by the committee, puts Canada's startup-to-scale conversion at 0.3%, against 2.2% in the United States and 3.2% in Sweden (Bowie, in Senate BANC, 2026).

Case Studies in Real-Time Access Failure

The health access pipeline compounds this economic loss:

• The Delayed Diagnostic: epiSign—a groundbreaking rare-disease diagnostic platform developed in London, Ontario—was in clinical use in global healthcare systems for years before Ontario finally made it reimbursable for local patients in late 2025.
• The Commercial Exit: Health Canada approved Novartis’s Vanrafia (for IgA nephropathy) in July 2026. Within weeks, the company declined to seek public reimbursement, citing the current access environment. U.S. most-favoured-nation pricing policy, which links U.S. prices to those in other wealthy countries, may also discourage launches in lower-priced markets such as Canada; the two pressures are hard to separate, and the registry (3G.1) would show which one drives decisions like this.

Why the Gaps Persist

This multi-decade gridlock is sustained by three interlocking barriers: how capital is structured, how policy is designed, and how public institutions behave.

1. Capital: Too Small, Too Fragmented, and Too Foreign

• The Second Valley of Death: Canadian life sciences funds average $150M to $300M, writing capped cheques of $10M to $20M. When a biotech company requires a $50M+ growth round to advance through Phase II/III clinical trials, they are structurally forced to look abroad. International investors make up 76% of participants (and 67% of total volume) in Canadian rounds above $50M [adMare Institute, 2025]. All-Canadian syndicates supply more than 70% of the money in rounds under $5 million, but only 12.7% in rounds above $50 million [Singer, 2026].
• The Third Valley: Companies that survive scale-up find few domestic buyers at the anchor stage. The number of companies listed on the TSX and TSXV fell from 3,520 in 2008 to 2,114 in 2024, and new listings fell from an average of 47 a year (2008 to 2013) to 16 a year (2014 to 2024) [Fraser Institute, 2025]. Without a deep domestic public market, the default exit is a sale to a foreign buyer. Graduations from the TSX Venture Exchange to the TSX fell from 72 companies in 2007 to 11 in 2025 (Senate BANC, 2026).
• The Syndication Tax on Time: A U.S. founder can often close a massive growth round with one or two lead institutional investors. Canadian CEOs must patch together many small domestic cheques. Months are wasted on duplicative, fragmented due diligence and legal terms. Speed and intensity are the core competitive advantages in a global race; every month a Canadian executive loses to fundraising is a month a better-capitalized foreign competitor spends moving ahead.
• The Pipeline is Thinning: Venture capital investment in Canadian life sciences dropped to $837M in 2025—its lowest level since 2018. Compounding this, Canada’s primary dedicated IP-backed lending fund has closed its doors to new investments, and fixed 5-to-10-year fund lifecycles routinely force early corporate sales.

2. Policy: Incentives Point the Wrong Way

• The Tax Code is an Input Trap: Canada’s primary innovation driver, the Scientific Research & Experimental Development (SR&ED) program, was expanded under Bill C-15 (which received Royal Assent on March 26, 2026). It doubled the enhanced expenditure limit to $6 million (raising the maximum refundable 35% credit to $2.1 million) and raised the phase-out thresholds to $15 million and $75 million. It also extended the 35% refundable rate to eligible Canadian public corporations. While this helps solve the early public-market cliff, the program remains strictly an input cost subsidy. It makes Canada a cheap place to do early lab work, but provides little incentive to hold the corporate entity or its revenues here once a drug commercializes.
• The Missing IP Incentive: Canada lacks a federal Patent Box regime to offer a discounted corporate tax rate on profits derived from domestically developed and commercialized IP, failing to match provincial initiatives like Quebec's innovation box deduction. Large milestone licensing windfalls can push a company below the 90% active-asset test threshold, causing investors to lose their Qualified Small Business Corporation (QSBC) capital gains status. Module 3D.8 proposes a federal innovation box.
• Invention Over Commercialization: Federal budgets referenced "research" and "innovation" 34 times more often than "commercialization" over a decade. Institutional commercialization offices are funded on activity counts (patents filed) rather than commercial outcomes (anchor companies built).
• The Closed Public Buyer: Healthcare procurement rewards the lowest upfront unit cost rather than long-term economic value. Current "buy local" templates count multinational logistics distribution centres as local vendors. Reviews still run largely in sequence, although Health Canada and Canada's Drug Agency now run some in parallel, a practice that has grown since COVID-19: Health Canada safety reviews occur first, followed by Canada's Drug Agency (CDA) assessments, then the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance (pCPA) price negotiations, and finally provincial formulary listings. Consequently, only 18% of new drugs launched globally are available through Canadian public drug plans (Hamelin, 2026), and Canada's share of global clinical trials has slipped from 6% in 2021 to 4% (Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Sector Task Force, 2026).

3. Behaviour: The "Risk-Averse" Institutional Stack

The capital and policy blocks persist because Canadian public institutions operate under a psychological survival mechanism operating as a three-part stack:

• The Base (Inertia): The status quo carries no visible career cost. Changing a funding formula, procurement rule, or regulatory pathway requires institutional effort that is rarely spent until an explicit crisis forces it.
• The Middle (Diffusion of Responsibility): Because healthcare is fragmented across federal approvals and provincial delivery, every actor can point to another layer. No single body owns the mandate of getting a Canadian discovery to a Canadian patient. Industry representation is divided the same way. National associations are organized around business models: research-based pharmaceutical companies, most of them multinational affiliates focused on market access and pricing; medical technology companies; and generic manufacturers. Only BIOTECanada centres on homegrown biotechnology companies, so domestic ownership and anchor companies have the thinnest representation in Ottawa, even as the old lines between brand, generic and biosimilar companies blur.
• The Top (Risk Aversion & Blame-Minimization): Governed by loss aversion, public system administrators view a visible procurement failure as a career-ending event, while the massive, invisible cost of missed innovation carries zero penalty. Inaction is safe and quiet.

This stack produces an ecosystem of anticipatory self-limitation, where institutions stop designing for Canadian-owned scale entirely. It levies a candour tax, where a heavy dependence on single-payer government funding forces industry insiders to self-censor rather than speak candidly about system failures. A reputational self-exclusion dynamic emerges, where qualified commercial leaders rule out working inside legacy government bodies.

While the COVID-19 crisis window proved that hospital digital tools and domestic manufacturing could be deployed in weeks, the system immediately reverted to baseline once the emergency lifted. Paralysis is a policy choice, not a technical limitation.

The Historical Record (The 45-Year Loop of Leakage)

Canada has repeatedly built world-class life sciences assets, only to surrender them at the point they became commercially viable. This loop is embedded in the sector's DNA:

• Connaught Laboratories (1914 to 1986): Founded at the University of Toronto, it manufactured insulin at near-cost for decades following its discovery in 1921. To preserve its domestic footprint, it was acquired from U of T by the federal Canada Development Corporation in 1972. However, Ottawa ultimately privatized it in 1986, leading to its acquisition by what is now Sanofi, and ownership of a foundational Canadian institution moved abroad. Sanofi still runs the Toronto site as a major vaccine centre that exports around the world, so the jobs largely stayed; the ownership, and the returns, did not.
• The Genesis (1981–1983): Canada launched its modern biotechnology ecosystem with the founding of pioneers QLT Inc. (1981) and Allelix (1983). While validating Canadian science globally—such as QLT’s blockbuster ophthalmic drug Visudyne—neither could achieve the structural scale required to remain independent domestic anchor firms, suffering from a chronic failure to scale up.
• Bills C-22 (1987) and C-91 (1993): Canada chose to give up compulsory licensing in exchange for stronger patent protection, a deliberate decision to compete in innovative medicines rather than mainly in copies. In return, the brand-name industry pledged to raise its Canadian R&D spending to 10% of sales, a commitment it tied to the policy conditions of the time. It met the target through the 1990s, peaking at 12.9% in 1997, but the ratio has been below 10% since 2003 and fell to 3.9% in 2019 (PMPRB). As generic challenges, health technology assessment and cost-containment measures grew, the conditions the pledge assumed changed, and so did the investment. The lesson for this blueprint is that pledges tied to market conditions do not hold on their own; retention has to be built into the incentives.
• Allelix Biopharmaceuticals (Sold 1999): One of Canada's pioneer biotech firms was sold to U.S.-based NPS Pharmaceuticals in an all-stock deal right as the Canadian government finally agreed to invest. Its core GLP-2 program became teduglutide (Gattex). NPS developed the asset in the United States before the company was acquired by Shire for US$5.2 billion.
• BioChem Pharma (Sold 2001): Based out of Laval, Quebec, and growing out of work at the Institut Armand-Frappier, this Canadian champion commercialized 3TC, a foundational anti-HIV molecule discovered by McGill chemist Bernard Belleau. Lacking a deep domestic institutional capital market to sustain its global commercialization push, it was acquired by UK-headquartered Shire Pharmaceuticals for C$5.9 billion at closing, moving its massive multi-decade cash-flow generation outside Canada.
• GLP-1 Biology: Researchers at the University of Toronto and Sinai Health made foundational contributions to GLP-1 science. The subsequent commercial windfall from blockbuster GLP-1 therapies went to Denmark's Novo Nordisk.
• Fusion Pharmaceuticals (Sold 2024): Spun out of the Centre for Probe Development and Commercialization (CPDC) at McMaster University, Fusion built a world-class clinical-stage radiopharmaceutical oncology platform with long-term backing from the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) and its commercialization subsidiary, FACIT. Highlighting the domestic capital deficit, its critical early Series A growth round was co-led by foreign venture funds Johnson & Johnson Innovation and Sweden's HealthCap. In 2024, global pharma giant AstraZeneca acquired Fusion for up to US$2.4 billion. While Hamilton operations were preserved to anchor local technical positions, the ultimate multi-billion-dollar corporate upside and Phase II prostate cancer clinical pipeline (FPI-2265) were permanently captured by foreign equity.

This historical record demonstrates that the reforms required are structural, not motivational. The policy blueprint must rewrite the formulas so that scaling inside Canada becomes the path of least resistance.

Part 2: The Priority Package

Eight reforms do most of the work. They are chosen for leverage and presented in the order a company meets them, from the lab to the patient. The engine is the anchor stage: priorities 5 and 6 make Canadian listings and late rounds investable for Canadian institutional and family capital, so returns stay here and recycle into every earlier stage. Every taxpayer dollar in the package carries incentive-based IP-retention terms (3A.3). Each reform is a full module in Part 3.

The journey has three valleys of financing, each a point where Canadian companies run short of domestic capital and are most often sold or moved abroad. The figure shows the stages that the framework below, and the sections of Part 3, refer to.

The Intervention Framework

The Logic of the Flywheel

The flywheel runs top-down from the anchor stage. Once Canadian capital can carry a company to a domestic listing, the returns stay here and fund every earlier stage:

1. Domestic Capital Makes Listing at Home Viable (Priorities 5 and 6): Pension, institutional and family capital backs Canadian late-stage and listed companies, and the compact's cornerstone sleeve anchors Canadian IPOs.
2. Exits Pay Out in Canada: Founders, employees, funds and their investors receive their returns at home rather than through a foreign acquisition.
3. Gains Recycle (Priority 2): The anchor-aligned capital gains exemption rewards holding and keeps that wealth invested in the next generation of Canadian companies.
4. New Companies Start on Canadian Terms (Priority 1): Streamlined licensing, patient venture philanthropy and IP-retention terms mean the next generation of discoveries forms companies quickly, survives to its first round and keeps its IP in Canada. Philanthropy carries the early risk, universities have a path to impact for publicly funded research, follow-on investors see more companies ready for investment, and Canada keeps the IP.
5. The Second Valley Is Crossed at Home (Priorities 3 and 4): The late-stage growth window lets Canadian funds lead large rounds, and tiered SR&ED keeps clinical trials here.
6. A Canadian First Customer (Priority 7): Total Economic Return procurement gives companies domestic revenue and a reference customer at every stage.

The Exit Registry (Priority 8) sits outside the loop and shows where it still leaks. Part 4 sets out the same eight reforms in the order they can be implemented, starting with those that need no new legislation.

Why Boards Sell, and What Changes It

Even companies with access to public markets get sold. Trillium Therapeutics traded on Nasdaq and the TSX, yet in 2021 its board accepted Pfizer's offer at a 118% premium. Boards sell when the return is there, and the answer is not to stop them. It is to change what the board is choosing between: today, one large foreign cheque against a long, uncertain path alone. The package changes that comparison in four ways:

• Control: Where a patient anchor holder controls the votes, as in the Novo Nordisk model, the decision to sell is not made only by investors who need an exit (3D.4).
• A Canadian bid: Pension, compact and family capital give the board a credible domestic alternative at a fair price, not just a choice between selling and struggling (3D.3, 3C.6).
• The after-tax math: The anchor-aligned capital gains exemption makes a long hold, a Canadian listing or a Canadian buyer worth more to directors and investors than a foreign sale (3B.1).
• Liquidity without a sale: A deeper domestic market lets early investors realize returns without selling the whole company, removing one of the main pressures to sell (3D.1, 3D.2).

Not every sale should be stopped. The aim is that the companies Canada wants to keep have a real choice, and that assets sold abroad can come home. Octane's 2026 buy-back of the Cocoon platform from Lonza was a boomerang that depended on luck; a repatriation notice and ready Canadian capital make such buy-backs repeatable (3G.1, 3D.3).

Own the Podium for Business

Canadians already know this strategy from sport. Own the Podium, created in 2005 after Vancouver won the bid to host the 2010 Winter Games, stopped spreading funding evenly and concentrated it on the sports and athletes with the best chance of winning medals. It spent $120 million from 2005 to 2010, and Canada won 14 gold medals in Vancouver, the most ever won by one nation at a Winter Olympics at the time (Canadian Encyclopedia). The anchor-company strategy applies the same discipline to the economy, on four principles:

• Pick on evidence of podium potential: Concentrate on three to five areas of national strength, chosen through open competition, rather than spreading small grants across every field (3A.6).
• Fund contenders at real scale: Back the companies and platforms that can reach the anchor stage with enough capital to finish, not just to start (3C.1, 3D.3, 3A.10).
• Review results and reallocate: Funding follows milestones and is renewed only on performance (3A.10, 3A.6, Part 4).
• Protect the base: Own the Podium was criticized for neglecting grassroots sport. The equivalent here is discovery research, which this package protects so that concentration at the top does not starve the pipeline (3A.8).

The aim is not to pick individual winners in advance but to decide where Canada intends to compete, fund those areas at a scale that can win, and measure the results in public.

Part 3: The Reform Catalogue

Each module in this catalogue stands alone as an operational blueprint. The provisions are structured under uniform fields to ensure clarity for policy drafters, legislative counsel, and institutional market participants.

The eight sections follow a company from the lab to the patient. The first four take it through the three valleys of financing: from discovery to a fundable company and early-stage capital (the first valley), scale-up capital (the second valley), and the anchor stage of listing and domestic ownership (the third valley). The last four cover what a company needs at every stage: talent and facilities, a first customer, patient access, and the national foundations beneath all of it. Modules marked Priority, with their number, form the eight-reform package set out in Part 2.

The figure in Part 2 shows where each section sits on the journey.

Two gaps on the product's path. The three valleys describe the money. The product itself must also cross two gaps: the translation gap, from discovery to an authorized clinical trial (Section 3A, especially 3A.10), and the health system adoption gap, from regulatory approval to patient access (Sections 3F and 3G). The package addresses both.

3A. From Lab to Company

The first valley sits between the bench and a fundable company; the system currently sends commercialization money through institutions built for research. None of the measures in this section moves ownership of IP to government. They reward keeping IP and companies in Canada, and leave the choice with the institution, inventor and company.

3B. Early-Stage Capital

Canada does not lack liquid capital; its tax architecture fails to reward early clinical risk, penalizes commercial execution, and permits exit proceeds to permanently leave the innovation ecosystem. Funds that succeed tend to move up to larger cheques, leaving the companies that need $2 million to $5 million behind; as one witness told the Senate Banking Committee, a $500 million fund "can't do 100 investments" (Senate BANC, 2026). What gets rewarded gets repeated: today the tax system treats a gain the same whether a company lists in Canada or is sold abroad, so a quick sale is rewarded as fully as building a Canadian anchor. The anchor-aligned exemption (3B.1) changes that reward.

3C. Scale-Up Capital

Canada’s primary financing deficit occurs when a scaling firm transitions from laboratory discovery to multi-centre clinical validation, requiring large-ticket growth cheques ($50M-plus) that exceed the concentration limits of typical domestic venture funds. The stages are linked: early-stage investment, growth capital and institutional liquidity "are sequential stages, not separate ones. A weakness at any one stage compounds across the others" (National Angel Capital Organization, in Senate BANC, 2026).

3D. The Anchor Stage: Listing and Domestic Ownership

The third valley sits at the anchor stage, when a company that has survived scale-up must either list and keep growing as an independent Canadian company or be sold. Canada's public markets have shrunk, and too many exits end in foreign ownership (see Part 1). This section covers the public-market, ownership and governance tools that let companies become Canadian anchors. Not every sale is a loss. Acquisitions return capital to founders and investors, and experienced founders often go on to build the next company; each of the seven largest foreign acquisitions of Canadian therapeutics companies since 2013 still operates in Canada, employing hundreds of people (adMare Institute, 2025). The aim is not to block exits but to make sure a company sells because a sale is the best outcome, not because Canadian capital ran out. That judgment, between a real constraint and an excuse, is what these tools are meant to inform.

What counts as Canadian. Three tests are in use, and they are often confused. Tax: a Canadian-controlled private corporation (CCPC) is private and not controlled by non-residents, so the status ends when a company lists; since Bill C-15, the enhanced SR&ED rate also reaches eligible Canadian public corporations not controlled by non-residents (3E.6). The Investment Canada Act: whether a business is Canadian-controlled is decided when someone proposes to acquire it, mainly by who holds the voting interests; it is a test applied at the moment of acquisition, not a status a company carries. Substance: where headquarters, senior management, R&D and the ownership of core IP actually sit (3A.3). A company can pass one test and fail another. AbCellera, for example, is incorporated and headquartered in Vancouver but listed only on Nasdaq, so most of its investor base and trading sit outside Canada. This blueprint uses substance plus control: incentives go to companies that keep headquarters, R&D and core IP in Canada and are not controlled by non-residents, rather than to a set percentage of Canadian share ownership. Ownership follows capital; the measures in this section are meant to make sure Canadian capital is there when it matters.

Statutory Governance Guidelines for the SBFT Board

To ensure the Sovereign Bio-Foundation Trust remains insulated from political interference, macroeconomic policy shifts, and public procurement lobbying, its charter must be governed by the following statutory framework:

1. Fiduciary Mandate and Legal Independence: The SBFT will be established via a dedicated Act of Parliament as an independent, arm's-length corporate entity. Its sole statutory mandate will be the maximization of long-term commercial scale and the domestic anchoring of intellectual property within Canada. The Act will prohibit the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, the Minister of Health, or any agent of the Crown from issuing binding policy directives or altering investment allocations regarding individual corporate assets or specific therapeutic pipelines.
2. Board Composition and Qualifications: The Board of Directors will consist of 9 members. Seats are restricted based on objective commercial and scientific criteria:

• Three (3) seats reserved for senior executives with a minimum of 15 years of international biopharmaceutical commercialization or late-stage life sciences venture execution experience.
• Three (3) seats reserved for institutional asset managers or pension fund chief investment officers overseeing portfolios exceeding $10B.
• Two (2) seats reserved for leading clinical scientists with extensive experience in international clinical trial management and translational medicine, including former public regulators, health scientists, or departmental research personnel.
• One (1) seat reserved for a specialized legal expert in international intellectual property law and corporate governance.
• Elected officials and political staff from any level of government will be legally barred from holding a seat on the Board or maintaining employment within the SBFT for a mandatory cooling-off period of ten (10) years.

1. Appointment Mechanics and Self-Perpetuation: The initial foundational board will be appointed by an independent, non-partisan merit-based selection committee consisting of representatives from the Council of Canadian Academies and the Canadian Association of Pension Supervisory Authorities (CAPSA). To eliminate political patronage loops, all subsequent vacancies on the Board will be filled via a self-perpetuating nomination process. The active Board will source, vet, and elect replacement members based on the skill-gating criteria, independent of Privy Council Office approval or Cabinet confirmation. Industry advocacy associations are legally barred from maintaining direct selection committee seats to eliminate conflicts of interest.
2. Capital Insulation, Accountability, and Operational Autonomy: The federal capitalization commitment to the SBFT will be structured as a one-time, permanent statutory appropriation drawn directly from the Consolidated Revenue Fund. It will not be subject to annual Parliamentary appropriations or Treasury Board reviews. To ensure institutional accountability, the SBFT will be subject to mandatory annual audits by the Auditor General, file comprehensive annual reports directly to Parliament, and undergo an independent legislative mandate review every five years. To attract top-tier global life sciences talent, the executive leadership of the SBFT will be compensated outside the standard Public Service Employment framework, indexed to private sector benchmarks.

3E. Talent, Lab Space and Clinical Development

Capital alone does not build a company. Scaling firms also need experienced commercial leaders, specialized facilities, and a reason to run their clinical trials here: funding partners who share the risk, an ethics review that does not repeat at every site, and a government that understands the sector. Leadership ambition matters as much as any program. Canada's companies with anchor potential are led by people who have said publicly that they intend to build, not sell: AbCellera's stated aim is a global biotechnology company that can repeatedly discover and commercialize medicines, and Xenon's chief executive has said the company wants to build a fully integrated company (Silcoff, The Globe and Mail, 2026). Policy cannot create that ambition, but it can stop penalizing it.

3F. The First Customer

Canada's public health system is the natural first customer for Canadian health innovation, yet procurement rewards the lowest upfront price rather than long-term value and rarely buys from domestic firms. Sections 3F and 3G address the health system adoption gap: the years between regulatory approval and patient access. Innovation here includes process as well as product: a better way to use the beds, staff and equipment the system already has is innovation too, and it often pays for itself. How care is delivered also shapes who can buy. Care is concentrated in hospitals, so a small number of large institutions, each with its own procurement process, decide what is adopted, and routine procedures queue behind hospital capacity. Several European systems, Germany's among them, deliver much routine specialist care outside hospitals through publicly insured clinics and office-based physicians. Publicly funded community clinics in Canada would add more, smaller buyers able to adopt quickly, so reforms to how care is delivered and to how the system buys should be designed together. The gap is not money: Canada spends well above the OECD average on health, but in the Commonwealth Fund's 2023 survey of 10 high-income countries, Canadians were the least likely to get a same- or next-day appointment (CIHI, 2024). Process and technology that make better use of existing capacity are where the return lies.

Total Economic Return (TER) Illustrative Scoring Metrics

To establish a clear structural framework, public healthcare tenders exceeding an illustrative floor of $250,000 for pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and digital health tools will be evaluated using the following balanced 100-Point Scorecard:

1. Upfront Acquisition Cost (30 Points Maximum): Maintained to protect public fiscal prudence, avoiding a total disregard for baseline pricing. The lowest compliant bid receives the full 30 points. All competing bids are awarded points on a declining linear scale relative to the lowest bid using the formula: Points = 30 × (Lowest Bid Price / Competing Bid Price).
2. Systemic Clinical Net Yield (30 Points Maximum): Measures the total economic footprint of the technology across the healthcare delivery continuum rather than evaluating the unit in isolation. Evaluated based on verifiably documented or clinically modelled outcomes over a 24-month patient horizon:

• Reduction in Length of Stay (LOS): Downstream reduction in hospital bed-days (10 Points).
• Operational Efficiency: Reduction in required nursing hours, secondary interventions, or surgical suite preparation times (10 Points).
• Readmission Mitigation: Documented drop in 30-day emergency room or acute-care readmission rates (10 Points).

1. Domestic R&D and IP Anchor (20 Points Maximum - Subject to Trade Gating): Rewards the continuous generation and retention of high-value knowledge wealth within Canada, counteracting the patent leakage documented in the IRPP data. Points are awarded based on an illustrative 15% corporate R&D reinvestment threshold and domestic patent control:

• IP Ownership: The absolute legal and commercial ownership of the core patent portfolio is held by a Canadian-incorporated entity (10 Points). Foreign-owned subsidiaries licensing IP from a global parent receive 0 points here.
• R&D Intensity: The vendor reinvests a minimum of 15% of its gross Canadian revenues directly back into eligible domestic R&D or Canadian clinical trials annually (10 Points).

1. Advanced Human Capital & Manufacturing (10 Points Maximum - Subject to Trade Gating): Incentivizes vendors to establish high-paying technical jobs and industrial infrastructure domestically. Evaluated by the physical and human resource allocation within Canada:

• Advanced Production: The product, device, or therapeutic molecule is manufactured, synthesized, or packaged within a domestic facility (5 Points).
• High-Value Jobs: The vendor directly employs a designated ratio of high-skilled technical personnel (e.g., PhD scientists, bio-engineers, data scientists) relative to total headcount within its Canadian operations (5 Points).

1. Supply Chain Resilience & Security (10 Points Maximum - Subject to Trade Gating): Mitigates the systemic healthcare vulnerabilities exposed during international supply chain disruptions. Points are awarded based on proximity and an illustrative six-month physical stock allocation:

• Input Proximity: A minimum of 60% of the product’s critical components or active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are sourced from within North America (5 Points).
• On-Shore Buffer: The vendor maintains a continuous, on-shore physical safety stock within Canada equivalent to a minimum of six (6) months of historical contract volume (5 Points).

3G. Patient Access and Reimbursement

Regulatory approval is not access. Canadian-developed products too often reach patients abroad first, or never complete the sequential federal and provincial review path at home.

3H. Sovereignty, Data and Supply Chain

COVID-19 showed that health supply is national security.

Part 4: Implementation

An executive-led, transitional Implementation Task Force—chartered with a direct Cabinet mandate and a dedicated operational budget—will execute the rollout across four phases. Moving beyond legacy voluntary coordination bodies that frequently collapse under real macroeconomic shocks, this task force is structured to launch immediate, high-priority legislative vehicles while managing downstream measures on a realistic operational timeline. The package leads with federal measures for a practical reason: provincial tax systems, Quebec's included, generally harmonize with federal changes, so a federal move sets the floor for all ten provinces. These phases mark when each step starts, not when it is finished. Budgets and legislation take time, which is why the first six months use only steps that need no new legislation and why the Task Force has a direct Cabinet mandate. Measures that need the provinces and territories will take longer and begin with willing jurisdictions.

Membership reaches beyond the health system. Alongside life sciences, health system and government members, the Task Force includes operators from other sectors, such as procurement, supply chain and logistics leaders who have run large systems to a budget. It is held to one headline outcome metric, set in its charter and reported at every milestone: the share of federally funded discoveries that reach patients through companies still owned in Canada, as tracked by the registry below.

To ensure complete accountability, the Task Force is mandated to publish transparent progress dashboards against each phase and report directly to Parliament at the 6-month and 12-month marks.

After the Task Force: Permanent Coordination

The Task Force is transitional. So that the work does not end with its mandate, it hands over to a permanent body. Several proposals for that body now exist, from this blueprint, BioCanRx, the Senate Banking Committee and others in the life sciences community, and they are merged here into one:

Program Continuity. National infrastructure in this package, including research platforms, trial networks and training programs, is funded on terms of at least seven years, with renewal based on performance, rather than three-year envelopes that end in a cliff. The Clinical Trials Fund, which supported Canada's clinical trial training platforms, including the CANTRAIN consortium, was a Budget 2021 commitment of $250 million over three years, with CIHR funding available until the end of March 2025 [CIHR, 2022]; the remaining money was partly re-profiled into 2025–26 [CIHR, 2025]. When time-limited money ends, the networks, trained staff and momentum built with it are lost, and the next program starts again from zero.

Phase I: Structural Launch and Investor Alignment (First 6 Months)

• Phased Licensing Adoption: Launch the three-phase adoption of streamlined university licensing: voluntary adoption of the SAIL licence by universities, then federal and provincial top-ups for adopters, with adoption becoming a condition of Tri-Agency funding once outcome data show it works. Attach incentive-based IP-retention terms to federal commercialization capital now, support first and conditions second [3A.1, 3A.3].
• Growth Window Design: Use the consultation on the Later and Growth Stage Investment Stream (open to November 23, 2026) to design a life sciences sleeve with the first-loss and follow-on features in 3C.1, alongside the $200 million VCCI life sciences stream, with new money in the next budget if needed [3C.1].
• The Domestic Capital Compact: Convene Canada's leading institutional asset managers and family offices to secure a voluntary, high-level allocation pledge for labelled funds that back Canadian late-stage and listed life sciences companies, modelled on the French government's Tibi Initiative [3D.3, 3C.6].
• The Exit Registry: Introduce the Approved-but-Not-Pursued (ANP) Exit Registry legislation, and launch a voluntary interim registry immediately as a fast-tracked early deliverable, using Novartis's decision not to seek public reimbursement for Vanrafia to establish the diagnostic baseline [3G.1].
• Parallel-Review Protocol: Open formal negotiations on an intergovernmental parallel-review protocol among Health Canada, Canada's Drug Agency (CDA), and participating provincial jurisdictions governing the pCPA to lay the groundwork for concurrent regulatory tracks [3G.3].
• Intermediary Review: Launch an outcome-based review of federally funded incubators, accelerators, commercialization intermediaries and government-funded sector associations, with common indicators and return-on-investment reporting, to fund what works and identify overlap [3A.4].
• Single Ethics Review: Make single research ethics review the default for multi-site trials at Ontario institutions receiving provincial research or hospital funding, and open talks with other provinces on a reciprocity agreement delivered through CanReview [3E.9].
• Regulatory Readiness Rule: Amend federal clinical trial funding criteria so awards pay for, or require a credible plan for, Clinical Trial Application work [3E.8].

Phase II: Budget Measures and Statutory Drafting (Months 6 to 18)

• Omnibus Tax Integration: Formalize and introduce the complete innovation tax package as a prioritized, independent division within the next federal Budget Implementation Act (BIA).
• Tax Code Codification: Embed the specific legislative text for the anchor-aligned small business capital gains exemption [3B.1], tiered SR&ED credits for clinical trials at Canadian sites [3E.6], the private-share donation measure and foundation disbursement quota updates [3C.6, 3C.5], the First Outside Equity Investment Tax Credit [3B.2], the Startup Loss Reinvestment Credit [3B.3], the commercialization matching credit [3B.4], the corporate venturing incentive [3B.5], the Biotech Flow-Through Share regime [3B.6], and the active-asset safe harbour [3D.5].
• Venture Philanthropy Seed: Commit federal seed and matching funding to a national venture philanthropy fund that invests in SAIL-licensed spinouts and recycles its returns, building on the proposed SAIL Fund [3A.9].
• The Canadian SBIR Act: Introduce legislation requiring federal departments and agencies with significant extramural health and life sciences R&D budgets to phase in a set-aside, funded from budget growth, for staged awards to Canadian-controlled small firms, with discovery funding protected [3A.5, 3A.8].
• Succession Capital Measures: Draft the capped Canadian Innovation Rollover pilot for business sales and estates, and the buyout-financing and contribution-deductibility measures for employee ownership trusts [3C.6, 3D.6].
• Anchor-Stage Measures: Draft the investment mandate for the compact's cornerstone sleeve and the Canadian Growth Savings Account legislation [3D.2, 3D.1].
• The SBFT Act: Formally introduce the Sovereign Bio-Foundation Trust Act, embedding the skill-based composition limits and self-perpetuation mechanics required to prevent political patronage [3D.4].
• Coordinating Authority Legislation: Draft legislation for a permanent coordinating authority with a single accountable head, authority over handoff standards between ISED, Health Canada and PHAC, a translational concierge, and a lab-to-ownership registry that incorporates the Exit Registry [Part 4, 3G.1].
• Sovereign Drug Development Fund: Design the fund with a five-year, milestone-driven mandate and biomanufacturing vouchers linked to existing BLSS facilities, and ask Statistics Canada to add readiness levels to the next research classification [3A.10, 3H.6].

Phase III: Market Intervention and Procurement Tendering (Years 1 to 3)

• Provincial Procurement Agreements: Offer dedicated federal funding, through bilateral agreements, to provinces that adopt Total Economic Return scoring, starting with willing jurisdictions [3F.1].
• Risk Gating: Finalize the structural underwriting rules and capitalize the reserves for the Venture Tenant Insurance (VTI) pool [3E.4].
• Priority Countermeasures: Issue the first requests for proposals for advance purchase contracts for priority countermeasures to secure early production baselines [3F.5].
• Health Innovation Agency Design: Scope an arm's-length, ARPA-style health innovation agency with provinces as first customers and fiscal returns reported to finance ministries, paired with procurement risk pooling [3F.7, 3F.3].
• Co-Funding and Exchange Launch: Open the first three-way co-funding calls with health charities and companies, launch competitions for long-term national platforms, and recruit the first industry exchange cohort [3E.8, 3A.6, 3E.10].
• Model Health Information Act: Publish a model provincial act with a duty to share, good-faith protection, published research-access numbers, accredited intermediaries and vendor duties, co-developed with First Nations, Inuit and Métis governments and organizations [3H.2, 3H.3].

Phase IV: Institutional Execution and Governance (Years 2 to 5)

• Growth Window Deployment: Open the growth window to participating pension and family office partners, calling the initial tranche of matching funds [3C.1].
• Cornerstone Sleeve Activation: Once compact pledges are in place, activate the listed-company sleeve to take cornerstone positions in Canadian life sciences IPOs [3D.2, 3D.3].
• SBFT Activation: Formally appoint the initial, non-partisan board of the Sovereign Bio-Foundation Trust via the independent merit selection committee, triggering the transition to a permanent self-perpetuating model [3D.4].
• Infrastructure Deployment: Activate the picks-and-shovels physical infrastructure funding stream to anchor localized advanced manufacturing capacity [3E.3].
• Coordinating Authority Stand-Up: Stand up the permanent coordinating authority, which absorbs the Task Force's functions and publishes its first handoff dashboard and registry report [Part 4].

Closing

Canada has the science, the talent and the capital appetite to build life sciences companies that scale and stay Canadian-owned. What it lacks is a coordinated policy architecture. The aim of this blueprint is not more discovery funding, but the same urgency applied to the commercialization, procurement and access stages where Canada consistently loses what it builds, and to each of the three valleys a company must cross: from the lab to a fundable company, through scale-up, and to the anchor stage of listing and staying Canadian-owned. By implementing these structural reforms, the federal government can turn systemic innovation leakage into lasting national wealth, so that Canadian discoveries strengthen both the health of Canadian patients and the prosperity of the Canadian economy. That urgency has to come from the top. Life sciences should be a national priority led by the Prime Minister and a standing item on the Cabinet agenda, with one minister accountable for results, and with the provinces and territories brought in as partners through dedicated funding rather than as the target of conditions.

Part 5: References

Capital, commercialization and tax

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• Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Commerce and the Economy. (2026, October). From Potential to Prosperity: The Urgent Case for Greater Investment in Canada's SMEs. Senate of Canada. Link
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Access, reimbursement and clinical trials

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• Australian Government Department of Health. PBAC Guidelines, Product Type 4: Codependent Technologies; Medical Services Advisory Committee technical guidelines. Link
• Benefits and Pensions Monitor. (2026). "Drugmaker pulls approved kidney treatment from Canadian reimbursement path." Link
• BioCanRx. (2025, September 5). Submission to Statistics Canada on the Canadian Research and Development Classification consultation.
• BioCanRx. (2026). Annual Report 2025–2026. Link
• BioCanRx. (2026, April). Canada's Pharmaceutical Sovereignty (Submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health).
• BioCanRx. (2026, April). Sovereign Drug Development for Canada (2026 Pre-Budget Submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance).
• BioCanRx. (2026, March). Governance and Accountability of Federal Science Policy and Institutions (Submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research).
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• Hamelin, B. (2026, June 25). Canada's wait for new medicines is long, and about to get longer. Innovative Medicines Canada. Link
• Institute for Progress. (2026). Why biotech companies go to Australia to test new drugs. Link
• Institute on Governance. Translational Health Research in Canada and Six Comparator Countries. Commissioned by BioCanRx; findings as described in the BioCanRx Annual Report 2025–2026. Link
• Government of Canada. (2024, May). "Government of Canada supports Brain Canada's research programs to improve brain health." Link
• Investment Migration Insider (IMI Daily). (2025). "Canada suspends Start-Up Visa, hints at new replacement in 2026." Link
• Lau, Mitha and Wills. (2026). Current Oncology, 33, 517. Link
• National Institutes of Health. (n.d.). "Single IRB for Multi-Site or Cooperative Research." Link
• Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada. (2026, July 13). "Novartis receives Health Canada approval for Vanrafia (atrasentan tablet)…" Link
• OECD. (2026). OECD Health Statistics 2026. Link
• Patented Medicine Prices Review Board. (n.d.). Investment and the number of clinical trials (presentation). Link
• Pharmaceutical Technology / GlobalData. (2026, June 12). "CDA Data Reveals Trends on Drug Approvals and Reimbursements in Canada." Link
• TechAlliance. "London, Ontario-headquartered EpiSign is revolutionizing rare disease diagnostics through AI." Link
• Teslo, R., & Kroetsch, A. (2026, September 4). Why Biotech Companies Go to Australia to Test New Drugs. Institute for Progress. Link

Procurement, data and sovereignty

• Affleck, E., Murphy, T. and Sutherland, E. et al Human Factor Health Data Interoperability. HealthcarePapers, Jan 2024, 21(4). Link
• Affleck, E., Murphy, T., Williamson, T., et al. (2023). Interoperability Saves Lives. Alberta Virtual Care Coordinating Body. Link
• AstraZeneca. (2024). "Acquisition of Fusion completed." Link
• Birch, K. (2026). Assetization: Anything and Everything? CIGI Papers No. 359. Centre for International Governance Innovation. Link
• Canadian Healthcare Technology. (2026, January 14). "Quebec's EHR doesn't automate vital signs." Link
• Canadian Press. (2026, March 26). "NATO says Canada met 2% spending pledge." Link
• Davies, C. (2025, December 1). "The new Defence Investment Agency is unlikely to “fix” Canada's defence procurement troubles." CDA Institute. Link
• European Union. (2025). Regulation on the European Health Data Space. Link
• First Nations Information Governance Centre. The First Nations Principles of OCAP®. Link
• Global Indigenous Data Alliance. (2019). CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance. Link
• Global News. Explainer on Canada and NATO's 5% defence spending target. Link
• Government of Ontario. (2026). "Ontario Investing $4.6 Million to Bolster Life-Saving Medical Isotope Production at McMaster University." Link
• Health Canada. (2023, October 12). "Pan-Canadian Health Data Charter." Link
• Health Canada. (2026, February 4). "The Government of Canada introduces legislation to build a more connected health care system." Link
• Health Canada. Critical and Vulnerable Drug List (CVDL). Link
• Health Canada, Public Health Agency of Canada and Public Services and Procurement Canada. (2026, August 5). "Canada advances new Medical Countermeasures Laboratory Facility in Winnipeg." Link
• INOVAIT. Health Data Licensing Principles. Link
• International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement. Standard sets. Link
• Labrie, Y. (2026). Beyond the Public-Private Divide: What Sweden Can Teach Canada. Fraser Institute. Link
• Mondaq / Field Law. (2020). "Alberta's Health Information Act: What Is Changing?" Link
• NATO. (2025). The Hague Summit Declaration. Link
• Networked Health-BC. (2026, October). British Columbia: Learnings from the Disconnected Care Report. Link
• Networked Health. Bill S-5 Policy Brief. Link
• Networked Health. Data Disarray. Link
• NPS Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (2000). SEC filing on the Allelix Biopharmaceuticals merger. Link
• Office for Life Sciences. (n.d.). "About us." GOV.UK. Link
• Ontario Institute for Cancer Research. (2024, March 25). "OICR-supported cancer therapeutics company Fusion Pharmaceuticals acquired by AstraZeneca for up to US $2.4 billion." Link
• Ontario Ministry of Health. Ontario Case Costing Initiative (OCCI). Ontario Data Catalogue. Link
• Porter, M. E., & Teisberg, E. O. (2006). Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results. Harvard Business School Press. ISBN 978-1-59139-778-6.
• Public Services and Procurement Canada. (2025, October 2). "Backgrounder: Defence Investment Agency." Link
• Riksrevisjonen (Office of the Auditor General of Norway). (2024). Investigation of the Health Platform in Central Norway (Helseplattformen). Link
• Santé Québec. (2026). "Santé Québec apporte des précisions sur les coûts associés au Dossier santé numérique." Link
• Shire plc. (2015, January 11). "Shire to Acquire NPS Pharma as Further Step in Building a Leading Biotech." Form 8-K, Exhibit 99.1. Link
• Singer, P. (2026, October 8). "A Canadian ARPA-H would pay three times." Global Health Insights (Substack). Link
• Synapxe. (2025). HEALIX (Health Empowerment thru Advanced Learning & Intelligent eXchange). Link
• Tam, S., Affleck, E., et al. (2025). Disconnected Care: The impact of the Alberta Health Information Act on the health and well being of Albertans. Alberta Virtual Care Coordinating Body. Link
• Worzel, R. (2026, August). "How Do We Get There From Here?" Any Minute Now (Substack). Link