Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Sector Task Force: Report to the ministers of health and industry

On this page

• Message from the co-chairs
• Executive summary
• Introduction
• Context and Canada’s pharmaceutical and life sciences landscape
• Recommendations

Message from the co-chairs

Dear Ministers,

We are pleased to submit the final report of the Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Sector Task Force and thank you for your leadership in establishing this important initiative. The creation of a focused and time limited forum has enabled a coordinated and rigorous examination of the structural challenges and opportunities shaping Canada’s pharmaceutical and life sciences sector.

This report comes at a critical juncture. Canada is operating within a rapidly evolving geopolitical environment characterized by intensifying global competition, supply chain vulnerabilities and shifting trade dynamics. These conditions have heightened the importance of strengthening Canada’s health sovereignty while ensuring people in Canada have reliable and affordable access to medications. They also underscore the need for clear direction and decisive action to address both longstanding and emerging pressures facing the sector.

Our work has focused on key areas including access to and affordability of medications, security of supply, modernization of regulatory and decision-making processes, and the advancement of translational research, innovation and commercialization across the life sciences ecosystem. 

A central thread throughout our work has been the importance of modernizing how decisions are made, including through the effective use of data, analytics and emerging technologies. The task force also examined the implications of geopolitical volatility and external trade pressures on Canada’s resilience and long-term competitiveness in the sector.

As co-chairs, we have benefited from the expertise and perspectives of task force members, experts and external stakeholders, who shared valuable insights and highlighted both the incredible expertise and riches and ongoing challenges within Canada’s pharmaceutical sector.

The advice set out in this report reflects both the urgency of the issues and the scale of the opportunity. Incremental change will not be sufficient to meet the moment. Decisive action, supported by sustained collaboration, will be required to strengthen outcomes for people in Canada and position Canada for greater resilience and growth in the global life sciences landscape.

We thank task force members for their commitment and contributions, as well as the secretariat for its strong support throughout this process.

Through frank and thoughtful discussions, we are able to present the recommendations contained in this report. We recognize that not all task force members may support each of the 39 recommendations. As co-chairs, we appreciate the confidence you have placed in us and respectfully submit this report and all recommendations for your consideration.

Respectfully,

Michelle Boudreau and Martin LeBlanc, Co-Chairs
Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Sector Task Force

Executive summary

Purpose and mandate

The Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences Sector Task Force was announced by the Government of Canada on March 18, 2026, with a mandate to explore innovative, made-in-Canada solutions that enhance competitiveness and long-term growth, to support reliable and sustainable access to pharmaceutical products in Canada. This work also contributes to strengthening Canada’s health sovereignty, including reducing vulnerabilities in supply chains, reinforcing domestic capacity and ensuring people in Canada can access the medicines they need, when they need them.

This report presents the advice from the co-chairs of the task force to the Ministers of Health and Industry. It reflects the task force’s synthesis of expert discussion and evidence, as well as recommendations to address structural and operational challenges affecting timely access to medicines, affordability, security of supply and the resilience and competitiveness of Canada’s pharmaceutical and life sciences ecosystem.

The task force brought together senior leaders and experts from across industry, research and policy communities. A full list of members is provided.

Through its deliberations, the task force examined a set of interrelated thematic areas, including:

• access to and affordability of medications
• pharmaceutical sovereignty and security of supply of medicines for Canada
• regulatory approaches for supporting innovation and resilience
• modernization of decision-making processes, with a focus on data and evidence
• research, innovation and the health product development pipeline
• economic growth, commercialization and scale-up of life sciences firms

In addition to formal task force meetings, the co-chairs undertook a series of targeted engagement sessions with a broad range of stakeholders across the pharmaceutical and life sciences ecosystem. These discussions were conducted to inform the task force’s work, deepen its understanding of system-wide interdependencies, and assess impacts on health outcomes for people in Canada. These engagements were not formal inputs to the task force’s report, but rather complementary efforts led by the Co-chairs to ensure a comprehensive and balanced perspective on the opportunities and challenges facing the sector. A list of organizations engaged through these sessions is provided.

Headline observations

Canada’s public pharmaceutical system is characterized by a complex, multi-step pathway to market and to patient access, involving federal, pan-Canadian and provincial/territorial processes and organizations. Following drug development, Health Canada authorizes products based on safety, efficacy and quality. Market authorization is the first step in the access pathway.

Subsequent stages include health technology assessment (HTA) by Canada’s Drug Agency (CDA-AMC)^{Footnote 1} and, in Quebec, the Institut national d’excellence en santé et en services sociaux (INESSS); pan-Canadian price negotiations occur through the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance (pCPA); and provincial and territorial governments determine based on their fiscal circumstances whether and when the pharmaceutical product is listed on their public drug plans. Private plans often provide earlier coverage following regulatory approval, but public reimbursement, which supports equitable and widespread access, depends on the completion of this process. In parallel, the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB) monitors the prices of patented drugs to ensure they are non-excessive and reports on pharmaceutical trends.

This system results from legacy sequential processes and decision-making architecture. While Canada performs comparatively well on regulatory review timelines, the overall time from market authorization to coverage on public drug plans is longer than in peer jurisdictions. This is most notable in post-approval processes. Time for these processes may take: in the case of HTA, 200 days^{Footnote 2}; for price negotiation, 195 days^{Footnote 3}; and for provincial/territorial listing decisions, 99 to 219 days^{Footnote 4}. These steps are initiated by a submission from the manufacturer for public coverage and conducted to ensure that the public drug programs can cover as many products as possible. They may however extend the time that patients covered by public drug coverage wait for their specific drug to be covered. Recent HTA process improvements have resulted in over 80% of the oncology products and over 70% of non-oncology products already being reviewed in a ‘stacked’ (concurrent) manner between the regulatory and HTA stages.

These dynamics contribute to longer effective timelines from global launch to patient access in Canada, reinforcing the country’s position as a later-launch market for many innovative medicines. Evidence also suggests that post-HTA processes, such as sponsor submission timing, pricing negotiations and separate provincial listing decisions, are important drivers of these delays.

The Canadian drug reimbursement system is oriented toward price containment, with multiple levers acting concurrently to ensure judicious spending of public funds. These include federal monitoring of patented drug prices to ensure they are non-excessive (PMPRB), HTA recommendations that incorporate multi-dimensional value assessment including cost-effectiveness, collective price negotiations through the pCPA and budgetary constraints at the provincial and territorial level. While these mechanisms play an essential role in ensuring value for money, affordability and sustainability, they can contribute to delayed or foregone market entry for certain products—particularly high-cost or specialized therapies.

Health outcomes in Canada remain uneven, reflecting a “postal code lottery” in access to medications. Where a person lives can significantly affect the availability, affordability and timeliness of drug coverage.

Taken together, a federated responsibility for medicines, sequential processes and a strong emphasis on stewardship of public funds create tensions between timely access for patients, affordability for insurers and attractiveness of the Canadian market for domestic and global innovative and generic and biosimilar companies with respect to their drug research, development and product launch activities.

In addition, as therapies become increasingly complex and innovative, elements of the current access architecture may no longer be fit for purpose, reinforcing the need for modernization not only to enhance global competitiveness but to ensure the system can effectively accommodate current and future innovations.

Addressing these tensions is central to improving both the health of people in Canada and the long-term competitiveness and resilience of Canada’s pharmaceutical and life sciences sector.

Overarching situation and problem statement

Canada’s domestic pharmaceutical sector, spanning innovative drugs, vaccines, biopharmaceuticals and generics represents a critical pillar of the national economy, supporting tens of thousands of high-value, skilled jobs across the country. The sector’s activities are broad and integrated, encompassing early-stage research and development, advanced manufacturing, commercialization, and enabling corporate functions such as the import and export of products and raw materials. Collectively, these activities generate billions of dollars in annual economic output and position the sector as both an innovation engine and a strategic industrial asset.

Canada possesses all of the potential and essential ingredients to become a global leader in the pharmaceuticals and life sciences industry as well as a preferred destination for life sciences investment and innovation. Despite these strengths, Canada continues to underperform relative to peer jurisdictions in translating its scientific capacity and industrial base into sustained economic growth and global competitiveness. This persistent gap reflects structural and policy challenges that have limited Canada’s ability to fully leverage its assets and attract investment, leaving significant unrealized potential.

The current geopolitical context is creating an urgent need to re-evaluate Canada’s industrial and market strategy in the innovative pharmaceuticals and life sciences industry as well as a unique opportunity for Canada to become a global leader in the innovative life sciences industry.

To address this need and capture this opportunity, Canada must urgently address some long-standing but addressable fundamental challenges:

• In comparison to other G7 countries, Canada is slower to provide access to innovative medicines, and its pricing policy prioritizes affordability and sustainability of health systems, which may not fully recognize the role of innovation in generating healthcare cost savings and delivering system-wide value. As a result, Canada is losing ground as a competitive destination for investment and innovation, global pharmaceutical companies are increasingly deprioritizing Canada for product launches, foreign direct investment in clinical trials and manufacturing in favor of other markets with more predictable policies, faster access, and stronger recognition of innovation value.
• Canada has a strong and highly competitive research infrastructure, but a lack of coordination between health and innovation mandates produces fragmentation across funding programs, translational infrastructure, and industry-academic partnerships which create a sub-optimal path for the translation of life sciences discoveries into venture-backed companies.
• Canada’s clinical trial environment is underperforming due to structural barriers, complex regulatory path, fragmented investment and weak data infrastructure, and drug reimbursement policies.
• Canada lacks a sovereign, connected, and accessible health and life sciences data ecosystem to fully leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and enable measurement of value/outcomes and healthcare savings from life sciences innovations.
• Canada has a solid track record of creating and maturing venture capital-backed innovative biotech and life sciences companies but fails to retain their ownership and scale them into commercial-stage domestic anchor companies due to a shortage of late-stage growth and scale-up capital from domestic sources and a challenging market access environment.

The collective impact of these challenges is reflected in a progressive erosion of domestic and foreign direct investment from both innovative and generic pharmaceutical industry that is weakening Canada’s health sovereignty. However, by addressing the above challenges, Canada can rapidly reverse the situation and develop a globally leading innovative life sciences industry that generates significant research and development (R&D), productivity and economic growth, as well as improvements to patient health outcomes and Canada’s health sovereignty and security.

Priority advice to ministers

Chairs of the task force recommend that the Government of Canada take deliberate, bold and swift action to make the changes needed to create a world-leading pharmaceutical and life sciences industry for a healthier and wealthier Canada. The sector must be viewed as a strategic, nation-building sector and fully supported as such. Given longstanding fragmentation across policies, programs and system actors, achieving this ambition will require a more integrated and coordinated approach to action across the full continuum of the sector.

The geopolitical environment provides an urgent need and a unique opportunity to make Canada a place where:

• people in Canada have access to innovative medicines without long delays once they have been assessed for safety and efficacy by Health Canada
• the Canadian market is seen as a viable market to launch innovative medicines
• Canadian talent and research is fully supported from bench science to bedside and commercialization
• innovation and intellectual property born in Canada can mature and remain in Canada
• clinical trial networks and data infrastructure power drug development, attract foreign direct investments and offer treatments to people in Canada
• research and development is supported with a coordinated and coherent set of industrial, investment and tax policies
• domestic value creation factored into procurement and investment decisions
• regulation, policy environments and decision-making bodies are adaptive, efficient, agile and collaborative

Introduction

This report sets out the task force’s advice to ministers, drawing on its deliberations over a time‑limited mandate. It is intended to inform ministerial consideration of potential federal policy, regulatory and operational responses.

The task force is a time‑limited advisory body providing advice and recommendations for ministerial consideration. It does not make decisions or commit governments.

The task force respects provincial and territorial jurisdiction and the roles of associated agencies and entities. Federal coverage policy decisions (for example, pharmacare, drugs for rare diseases) are out of scope.

Advice reflects synthesis of task force discussions, including meeting deliberations and written submissions.

Context and Canada’s pharmaceutical and life sciences landscape

The task force devoted significant attention to understanding the current context of Canada’s pharmaceutical and life sciences landscape, including the structural features, strengths and persistent challenges that shape access, affordability, innovation and system sustainability, as well as opportunities to improve Canada’s competitiveness in the global industry.

The global pharmaceutical industry

The global pharmaceuticals industry generated revenues estimated at $2.4 trillion^{Footnote 5} in 2025. Pharmaceuticals under patent exclusivity accounted for 59% of total drug sales and 81% of sales of brand pharmaceuticals. Over 80% of branded pharmaceutical revenues are derived from innovative blockbuster drugs that each generate over $1.0 billion in annual sales. However, the industry is navigating a structural shift, as roughly 190 drugs will be facing loss of patent exclusivity between 2025 and 2030, which could impact an estimated $400 billion in annual branded revenue. The 25 most valuable pharmaceutical companies account for over 50% of global industry revenues and re-invest an average of $10 billion per year, or 21% of their revenues in R&D expenditures, thus representing an important potential source of foreign direct investment for Canada. The United States houses the headquarters of 11 of the top 25 companies with the 14 others headquartered in the United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland, France, Denmark, Netherlands and China. Canada does not currently have an innovative pharmaceutical anchor company. However, 10 of the world’s top 25 companies are younger biotech companies that have emerged over the last 50 years and which Canada could potentially develop. They have on average 31 years of age (with 5 aged under 30), an average market capitalization of $104 billion and invest 27% of their revenue or $4.5 billion in annual R&D expenditures.

Canada’s pharmaceutical management system and pharmaceutical and life sciences ecosystem

Canada’s pharmaceutical system is complex, multi-layered and highly distributed, reflecting constitutional responsibilities and the historical evolution of policy instruments. It spans the full lifecycle of medicines, from research and clinical development through regulatory authorization, health technology assessment, pricing, reimbursement and post-market oversight.

Key federal actors include Health Canada (regulatory authorization and safety oversight) and the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB) (price monitoring). The PMPRB was established in 1987 in response to strengthened patent protections under the Canada–U.S. Free Trade Agreement and evaluates patented drug prices for excessiveness and reports on trends. For context, in April 2026, a USTR report noted that excluding Switzerland and the U.S. from the PMPRB’s comparator basket artificially devalues innovative medicines in Canada.

The federal government also supports pan-Canadian bodies, specifically, Canada’s Drug Agency (CDA-AMC) ^{Footnote 6} and the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance (pCPA). Collectively, these pan-Canadian bodies play central roles in assessing clinical and economic value, negotiating prices for publicly funded drug coverage. Provincial and territorial governments ultimately determine formulary listings and coverage decisions for public plans, while private insurers often provide earlier access following regulatory approval.

Within this system, Canada’s broader pharmaceutical and life sciences ecosystem includes academic research institutions, hospitals, clinical trial and translational research networks, pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms, contract research organizations, and a domestic generics and biosimilars sector. The ecosystem benefits from strong foundational assets, including world-class universities and research hospitals, a highly skilled workforce and a diverse population that supports inclusive and representative clinical research.

However, the system’s design, featuring sequential processes, multiple decision-makers, and differing evidentiary and policy objectives, introduces complexity and contributes to variability in outcomes across jurisdictions. It also creates a regulatory and reimbursement environment that is viewed as complex and cumbersome by manufacturers and international pharmaceutical companies.

Key system pressures and operational challenges

Timelines across the access pathway

Once a submission is received, Health Canada performs comparatively well on regulatory review timelines, with service standards of approximately 300 days for new drugs and 180 days for generics, alongside regulatory review pathways such as Priority Review and Notice of Compliance with Conditions. Nonetheless, important challenges persist. Evidence indicates that submissions to Health Canada are often filed significantly later than in peer jurisdictions, by approximately 262 days (median)^{Footnote 7}, delaying entry into the Canadian review process.

Health technology assessment (HTA) through CDA-AMC (and INESSS in Quebec) is a next step providing a value assessment, with review timelines of approximately 200 days on average, although recent improvements have been observed. Initiatives such as aligned reviews, pre-NOC reviews and the Target Zero initiative have demonstrated meaningful reductions in lag time between regulatory decisions and reimbursement recommendations, but there remains a lag that can and should be addressed by industry filing its submissions earlier.

Despite these improvements, the post-authorization phase remains a key source of delay. Following HTA recommendations, the pCPA undertakes pan-Canadian price negotiations, which take approximately 195 days on average^{Footnote 8}, with additional time often required before negotiations formally commence. Several initiatives are underway to improve these timeframes, including a collaboration between CDA-AMC and pCPA that allows early access to promising therapies. To date, there has been limited uptake: 3 drug submissions participated in the pilot.

Subsequently, individual provinces and territories make independent formulary listing decisions, which can take an additional 99 to 219 days^{Footnote 9}, and may not be harmonized across jurisdictions. This results in variation in access across the country, even following successful price negotiations, as well as uncertainty for patients and manufacturers.

Fragmentation and inconsistency

These sequential processes are compounded by fragmentation across more than 100 public drug plans and approximately 100,000 private plans, resulting in uneven coverage, administrative complexity and incomplete alignment across decision-makers. Differences in provincial and territorial listing decisions following pCPA negotiations further contribute to inequity in access and challenges for system coordination.

Recent initiatives aim to address these challenges. Health Canada is advancing new regulatory pathways and international collaboration mechanisms (for example, Project Orbis, Access Consortium), while CDA-AMC and pCPA are implementing process improvements, and Ontario’s FAST (Funding for Accelerated System Transformation) program is exploring accelerated access approaches. While promising, these measures remain at varying stages of implementation.

Clinical trials and research performance

Canada has historically been a strong destination for clinical trials, supported by its publicly funded health system, a highly ethnically diverse and representative population, and strong research performance. These attributes offer important advantages, particularly for generating high-quality evidence and supporting innovation. Globally, clinical trials account for an estimated 30% of the overall R&D expenditures of the bio pharmaceutical industry and represent a large and rapidly growing annual market of $82 billion. Canada has enjoyed a strong historical position and high potential for being a global market leader in clinical trials, with a current 4% share of global clinical trials market representing $3 billion in direct expenditures annually, of which industry-sponsored trials account for $2.1 billion. Moreover, Canada has the highest number of ongoing trials per capita in the G7 with over 3000 active clinical trials and Canadian researchers are amongst the most cited in the world. Clinical trials generate over 20 high-wage jobs created per $1 million invested and generate significant spillover health-system benefits from earlier patient access and ability for earlier evaluation of the impact/efficacy of innovative candidate therapies.

However, evidence and stakeholder input indicate that Canada is losing ground relative to peer jurisdictions in attracting and retaining clinical trials. Canada’s global market share has eroded from 6% in 2021 to its current 4% market share, resulting in an opportunity cost of $2.5 billion in clinical trial spending and approximately 20,000 jobs. Contributing factors include complex and duplicative approval processes, slower study start-up times, limited coordination across sites, lack of support and coordination for Canadian discoveries to progress reliably from research laboratory through clinical development, less attractive drug market access and reimbursement environment and global competition for trial investment. These challenges risk undermining Canada’s ability to translate research strengths into economic and health system benefits.

A key additional consideration is the link between reimbursement pathways and clinical trial participation. Sponsors assess not only the conduct of trials, but also the likelihood of timely, sustainable patient access following completion. Where this pathway is unclear or protracted, Canada becomes a less attractive location for investment, particularly for rare disease therapies and high-cost, innovative medicines.

Canada’s pharmaceutical footprint and strengths

Canada represents a relatively small but nonetheless important share of the global pharmaceutical market, accounting for approximately 2.1%^{Footnote 10} of global spending, or $50 billion annually.

The Canadian market is characterized by a high reliance on imports, which have grown from 74% to 93% of total domestic drug expenditures over the past decade, underscoring supply chain vulnerabilities.

In terms of market composition:

• Brand-name pharmaceuticals account for over 80% ($40 billion) of total sales, despite representing a smaller share (23.4%) of prescription volume; patented brand name pharmaceuticals account for approximately 47% ($21 billion) of total sales, whereas unpatented brand name pharmaceuticals account for the balance of $17 billion (33.2%).^{Footnote 11}
• Generics and biosimilar drugs represent an essential segment for Canadian pharmaceutical affordability, accounting for only 20% ($10 billion) of sales but a significantly higher proportion (76.6 %) of prescriptions.^{Footnote 12}
• Biologics and biosimilars represent a small share of prescriptions (~2.4%) but a disproportionately higher 38.6% share of spending ($19.3 billion), reflecting the growing impact of these higher-cost therapies.^{Footnote 13}

Canada's biotechnology sector is a rapidly growing industry with over 1,000 companies mostly focused on pre-commercial research and development of therapeutics, genomics and AI-driven drug discovery. The top 10 publicly traded Canadian biotech companies have an aggregate market capitalization of $13 billion and employ over 1500 people. The industry is largely anchored in major research hubs like Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. Canada’s life sciences sector strengths are concentrated in niche, science-driven areas such as mRNA technology, radiopharmaceuticals, vaccines, cell and gene therapies antimicrobials and artificial intelligence. More broadly, the country excels in early-stage discovery, platform technologies, and academic–hospital research ecosystems, rather than large-scale commercialization.

Global and geopolitical context

Canada’s pharmaceutical landscape is increasingly shaped by a rapidly evolving global environment, marked by changing trade dynamics, supply chain disruptions and shifting policy approaches among peer countries.

Emerging pressures—including “most-favoured nation” pricing policies, tariffs and industrial policy responses—are influencing where companies choose to invest, conduct research and launch new medicines. Countries are also deploying a broader set of research and industrial policy levers to strengthen resilience, competitiveness and domestic capacity. In addition to pricing interventions, governments are:

• increasing oversight and actively managing supply risks through policy and procurement (for example, Japan, Germany, France)
• treating knowledge translation and adoption as a core system function (for example, Germany, Australia, Singapore)
• using funding and procurement incentives to anchor domestic production (for example, European Union, United Kingdom, Australia), and
• leveraging regulatory systems as a competitiveness tool to attract trials and investment (for example, United States, South Korea, Japan)

China, by contrast, is pursuing system‑wide reform to build a globally competitive life sciences ecosystem, aligning pricing, regulation and innovation policy through coordinated tools and capitalizing on structural advantages (lower costs, faster timelines, large patient populations) to position itself as a leading destination for global trials and investment and health research, with companies in China now accounting for roughly 50% of global out-licensing deals, up from virtually none a decade ago.

These divergent approaches are intensifying global competition for talent, investment, clinical trials and early product launches, with implications for Canada’s relative position.

Security of supply and health sovereignty

Canada’s pharmaceutical supply chains are highly globalized, with significant reliance on foreign capacity and materials. This includes dependence on active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), which are essential to the production of both innovative and generic medicines. Global API supply is highly concentrated, with China and India accounting for approximately 80% of production.

Recent global developments have underscored the fragility of these supply chains. Shifts toward protectionist trade policies, tariffs and efforts by major jurisdictions to onshore production have contributed to an increasingly vulnerable supply chain, escalating Canada’s chances of facing supply disruption or shortages. 

These new factors have heightened the need to understand which drugs are critical to people in Canada to ensure access is maintained. Health Canada has identified 157 drugs—from 9,000 marketed drugs—that are critical to patients and vulnerable to shortage in the Critical and Vulnerable Drug List. This list is intended to be used to inform action and target efforts towards securing supply chains for drugs people in Canada need, ensuring a secure and reliable supply of medicines, which has become more closely linked to broader economic and national security considerations.

Broader federal frameworks of relevance in that area include Canada’s Defence Industrial Strategy, which emphasizes strengthening domestic capabilities, safeguarding critical supply chains and reducing strategic dependencies. In the life sciences context, there are areas of overlap between health and national security priorities, including dual-use products and technologies such as medical countermeasures, vaccines, biologics and biomanufacturing platforms that support both civilian health needs and emergency preparedness. These linkages underscore the increasing integration of health, industrial and security objectives in shaping Canada’s pharmaceutical landscape.

The federal government has also introduced the Buy Canadian policy, which, although not specifically applied to pharmaceuticals, frames federal procurement not only as an operational tool but also as a lever to support economic and national security objectives. The policy includes measures to prioritize Canadian suppliers and Canadian content in strategic federal procurements, as well as the use of Canadian materials. It also incorporates a reciprocal procurement approach, whereby federal purchases for non-defence goods and services are sourced from Canada or from trading partners that provide reciprocal market access through trade agreements. In addition, the policy includes targeted support for small- and medium-sized enterprises through dedicated procurement programming.

Innovation, R&D, and investment dynamics

Canada’s life sciences ecosystem is widely recognized for its strong research base, highly skilled workforce and vibrant community of innovative small- and medium-sized enterprises. The country performs well in early-stage discovery, clinical research and company creation, supported by world-class academic institutions, a diverse and capable talent pool and early-stage venture capital funds that have demonstrated leading investor returns as well as solid company and value creation track records. The life sciences sector is the second leading sector for venture capital (VC) investment in Canada, but lags far behind the information and communication technology sector in terms of total VC investment. However, despite accounting for only 7% of all venture capital investments in Canada, the life sciences sector generated the highest 10-year gross returns among all sectors. Notably, it outperformed the information and communication technology sector by generating 11 (or 22%) of Canada’s Top 50 company exits, 4 (or 80%) of the top 5 VC-backed exits, representing 44% of the aggregate value generated from such exits.

These foundational strengths position Canada as an important contributor to global innovation and a promising environment for the development of new therapies and technologies.

However, Canada continues to face persistent and systemic challenges in translating this strength into commercial success and globally competitive firms. Over the past 15 years, 21 Canadian life sciences companies have been acquired by foreign entities for market values of more than $500M, with an average transaction value of $1.8 billion. These transactions demonstrate Canada’s solid track record of creating and maturing innovative life sciences companies to the value inflexion stage where they can generate significant return on investment for their innovations. But they also illustrate Canada’s systematic inability to retain Canadian ownership of these companies once they reach their value inflexion point. Structural gaps across the commercialization continuum, including limited access to late-stage and growth capital, insufficient scale-up infrastructure, and fragmented policy supports, constrain the ability of firms to mature, expand and retain value domestically. Canadian innovative biotech companies attract seed and early-stage support but are ultimately scaled-up with foreign capital, particularly from U.S. venture funds. For later-stage investment rounds of more than $50 million, international investors account for 76% of all investors and 67% of deal volume. As the companies grow, the portion of Canadian ownership drops sharply, shifting majority control to foreign investors and causing them to be acquired prematurely by foreign firms. These later-stage investors and acquirers often relocate intellectual property (IP) and commercialization activities abroad to markets with more favourable financing and scale-up conditions, causing capital and economic returns to leave Canada at the precise moment when value is created. Of the top 20 Canadian therapeutic exits since 2013, Canadian investors captured only 23% of the returns. As a result, many of the highest-value economic benefits—high-skill jobs, strategic infrastructure and broader ecosystem effects—are lost or never fully built in Canada, weakening the ecosystem between cycles. This dynamic has contributed to a sustained “innovation leakage” in Canadian life sciences, characterized by lost economic value, diminished domestic ownership of intellectual property and the continued absence of globally scaled Canadian anchor firms capable of benefiting from and acquiring these promising domestic innovations.

Capital market deficiencies rank among the most important factors for the loss of Canadian ownership. Canada has no overall shortage of investible capital, but too little of it is being mobilized to support development and growth of leading-edge life sciences companies and technologies. Canadian Healthcare Venture capital funds are relatively small with an average fund size of $150-300 million, and they are focused on earlier company development stages with average investments of $10-20 million. There is a chronic shortage of later-stage scale-up capital from domestic sources. Canadian major pension fund (Maple 8) investments in life sciences are very low overall, are primarily concentrated in U.S. private equity and late-stage venture funds and are not significantly allocated to Canadian funds. Stark evidence of this shortage is reflected in the fact that there currently is no Canadian institutional ownership in any of Canada’s top 3 publicly-traded biotechnology companies (Xenon, Zymeworks and AbCellera).

These challenges are further compounded by multi-step and unpredictable market access and procurement pathways, as well as regulatory, reimbursement and adoption processes that are not consistently aligned with the needs of Canadian innovators and the health system opportunity of these products. The decentralized nature of Canada’s healthcare system, including its decision-making processes across regulation, health technology assessment, price negotiation, and provincial and territorial listing, creates uncertainty, delays and variability in adoption timelines. This undermines domestic and international investor perception of Canada as a supportive context for innovation. It also reduces Canada’s attractiveness as a first-launch market due to structural barriers against opportunities for firms to achieve early revenues and scale domestically.

These domestic constraints are unfolding in an increasingly competitive global environment, where peer jurisdictions are deploying coordinated industrial strategies and large-scale incentives to attract investment and anchor commercialization activity. Strengthening Canada’s performance will require a more coordinated and strategic approach that improves access to capital, aligns policy and regulatory frameworks, and better leverages domestic demand to support the growth and retention of Canadian innovation.

Finally, it is important to recognize the need to develop Canadian-based “anchor companies,” globally competitive firms that span the full value chain from research through commercialization and remain substantively rooted in Canada in terms of leadership, operations and intellectual property. Anchor companies play a critical role in sustaining ecosystems and competitive clusters by generating talent, attracting investment and reinvesting in research and innovation. Without anchor companies creating globally-competitive life sciences clusters in Canada, the ecosystem may remain reliant on public-sector funding to grow. Although Canada does not currently have firms of this scale, several companies are currently at sufficiently advanced stages of development to be on that trajectory. The ability to bring even a small number of these to full maturity may have transformational implications for both the economy and the health innovation system, as well as bringing global recognition.

Canada’s structural and capital challenges reflect a deeper governance issue: separate mandates for health (safety and oversight) and innovation (growth and commercialization), with no formal federal mechanism to align decisions across the translational continuum. This “risk governance deficit” means institutions operate under different logics without coordination, unlike peer jurisdictions that outperform Canada, all of which have established cross-portfolio alignment mechanisms.

Towards a coordinated national approach

The co-chairs note and welcome the Minister of Health’s recent speech at the World Health Assembly that outlined priorities for the pharmaceutical and life sciences sector, which aim to strengthen Canada’s position across the full value chain. The minister noted that the approach is built on four key pillars: a trusted regulatory system that gives companies the confidence to invest and grow in Canada, and stronger alignment with provincial partners and like-minded countries to move faster together and help shape global standards. It also includes a modernized clinical trial framework that supports innovation and patient access to new therapies, along with a world-class talent and research ecosystem.

Overall, the Canadian system has strong foundational assets but is constrained by the complexity of a federated system, competing priorities of access, innovation and sustainability and misaligned incentives, operating within a rapidly changing global environment. Addressing these challenges through a new mindset, a broader assessment of value and recognition of the ongoing need to make choices in the best interest of Canada will require coordinated and sustained action across governments and system partners to improve access, strengthen health sovereignty, build biomanufacturing capacity as a driver of value creation and enhance Canada’s competitiveness in the life sciences sector.

Concurrently, Health Emergency Readiness Canada (HERC) is developing a proposed federal strategy focused on commercialization that aims to better align activities from discovery through to scale-up, with the objective of supporting researchers, startups and emerging firms as they grow into competitive Canadian companies. The approach builds on HERC’s coordinating role within the life sciences sector and is intended to strengthen the progression of innovations through early clinical development toward sustainable, scalable operations in Canada. The proposal builds on stakeholder consultations and will be refined through targeted engagement, including a discussion paper and roundtables in summer 2026. The commercialization strategy is expected to be released in fall 2026. 

Recommendations

Main challenges to address

1. Canada’s pharmaceutical policies focused on cost containment and its complex and lengthy regulatory path to re-imbursement have caused a progressive erosion of domestic and foreign direct investment from both innovative and generic pharmaceutical industry that is being exacerbated by global trade dynamics and pricing policy rebalancing, which may impact the launch of new medicine and future investment.
2. Canada’s clinical trial environment is underperforming due to structural barriers, complex regulatory path, fragmented investment and weak data infrastructure, and drug reimbursement policies.
3. Canada lacks a sovereign, connected, and accessible health and life sciences data ecosystem to fully leverage AI and enable measurement of value/outcomes and healthcare savings from life sciences innovations.
4. Fragmentation across funding programs and translational infrastructure, combined with a lack of industry-academic coordination create a sub-optimal path for the translation of life sciences discoveries into venture-backed companies.
5. The shortage of domestic sources of late-stage growth capital is a major structural impediment to Canada’s ability to retain Canadian ownership venture capital-backed innovative life sciences companies and scale them into commercial stage anchor companies.

Task force recommendations

Chairs of the task force recommend that the Government of Canada take deliberate, bold and swift action to make the changes needed to create a world leading pharmaceutical and life sciences industry for a healthier and wealthier Canada. The sector must be viewed as a strategic, nation-building sector and fully supported as such. Therefore, the Government of Canada should consider the need for, and appropriate timing of, increased investments in the pharmaceutical and life sciences ecosystem.
The geopolitical environment provides an urgent need and a unique opportunity to make Canada a place where:

• people in Canada have access to innovative medicines without delays once they have been assessed for safety and efficacy by Health Canada
• the Canadian market is seen as a viable market to launch innovative medicines
• Canadian talent and research is fully supported from bench science to bedside and commercialization
• innovation and intellectual property born in Canada can mature and remain in Canada
• clinical trial and translational research networks and data infrastructure power drug development, attract foreign direct investments and offer treatments to people in Canada
• research and development is supported with a coordinated and coherent set of industrial, investment and tax policies
• domestic value creation is a factor in procurement and investment decisions
• regulation, policy environments and decision-making bodies are adaptive, efficient, agile and collaborative

Notes regarding pricing, reimbursement and patient access

Various bodies play central roles in assessing drugs before they reach patients in Canada. Health Canada assesses safety and effectiveness. Clinical effectiveness and pharmacoeconomic value are assessed by Canada’s Drug Agency (Health Technology Assessment or HTA), the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance considers the HTA assessment and negotiates prices for publicly funded drug plans. Provincial and territorial governments, who are the “payers,” ultimately consider value when they determine formulary listings and make drug coverage decisions for public plans. Private drug plans consider similar inputs in developing and managing their drug plan offerings to employers.

Note that the recommendations which follow regarding the Canada Drug Agency and the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance are provided with an understanding and recognition of provincial and territorial jurisdiction and decision-making. The task force, however, discussed areas where the federal government can work collaboratively with provincial and territorial governments through existing governance and accountability structures. In addition, it was noted that the federal government is also a drug plan provider. providing drug coverage for specific populations including: First Nations and Inuit, members of the armed forces, eligible veterans and members of the RCMP, certain groups of newcomers to Canada, inmates in federal correctional facilities and federal public service employees and retirees. The task force also discussed that the federal government may need to consider initiatives to support jurisdictions in the evolving global context.

Regulatory modernization – Health Canada

The chairs of the task force make the following recommendations with the overarching objective of improving Canada’s regulatory and procurement efficiency through the adoption of streamlined processes that accelerate decision-making and prioritize Canadian-based companies, manufacturing and R&D activities

1. Health Canada should expand and accelerate adoption of the proposed reliance framework for innovative drugs

Adopt more systematic and predictable use of reliance on trusted foreign regulators across innovative drug approvals, establishment inspections/licensing, and lifecycle management to accelerate access and reduce duplication.

Move quickly to expand to a broader list of drug classes that will be included in the reliance framework where Reliance can have the greatest impact on patient access, such as oncology, HIV, and antimicrobial drugs, vaccines, drugs that treat rare diseases, and those meeting the criteria for HC Priority Review or NOC(c).

Health Canada should commit to an implementation timeline, with a shortened submission review timeline, and the first reliance review initiated no later than by the end of Q4 2026.

2. Enable rolling and flexible regulatory reviews

Allow updated data submissions during review processes and move toward rolling review models to accelerate time to market authorization.

3. Establish a dedicated single-window for regulatory navigation

Establish a navigator function that provides sponsors with a dedicated point of contact throughout the regulatory review process.

The navigator should facilitate structured sponsor engagement at defined intervals, (for example, 30, 60 and 90 days) in the review process, with the explicit mandate to clarify evidentiary expectations.

The function should be designed to accommodate the complexity of novel product categories, including advanced therapy medicinal products, where regulatory pathways are less standardized and sponsor guidance needs are greatest.

4. Streamline low-risk administrative changes

Allow low-risk administrative changes, such as adding new pack sizes, updating package artwork, and making minor labelling adjustments, without requiring a new regulatory submission, reducing burden and improving agility.

5. Modernize review processes through collaborative structures

Continue modernizing review processes by establishing a technical working group that includes industry representatives, creating a structured forum to identify bottlenecks, develop solutions, and support more efficient and predictable reviews.

6. Establish a structured engagement program for made-in-Canada advanced therapies

Address structural barriers faced by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)and not-for-profit organizations developing made-in-Canada advanced therapies by emulating programs operationalized by peer regulators, such as the European Medicines Agency’s dedicated ATMP academic pilot (launched 2022) and the U.S. FDA’s Regenerative Medicine Advanced Therapy (RMAT) designation and Support for clinical Trials Advancing Rare disease Therapeutics (START) pilot.

7. Strengthen regulatory capacity through targeted modernization investments

Health Canada should invest in modernizing its review processes and infrastructure to enable the effective implementation of these recommendations.

Assessment of value, pricing and reimbursement

The chairs of the task force make the following recommendations with the overarching objective of improving assessment of innovation value, market access and reimbursement conditions for innovative pharmaceutical and medical technology products.

Innovation and assessment of value – Canada’s HTA process

A small working group of task force members worked to propose a practical framework of pharmaceutical innovation. The framework’s objective was to: support the deliberations of the task force, guide future discussions to broaden the assessment of value within reimbursement recommendations.

8. Redefine value frameworks

It is recommended that a multi-dimensional framework, specifically clinical/patient value, health system value and societal value (for example, productivity), be further developed to recognize the value of innovation, and that an implementation plan be developed with a broad range of interested parties. This work should also include discussion of the feasibility and use of the framework.

CDA-AMC should continue to evolve its Health Technology Assessment evaluation framework to adopt a broader value framework which would include clinical/patient value, societal value and health system value offered from innovation. 

CDA-AMC, working with pCPA and collaboratively with pharmaceutical manufacturers, should evolve its economic assessment methodology. 

CDA-AMC should discontinue the practice of publicly publishing its price reduction recommendations.  

CDA-AMC should continue its efforts to ensure its reviews are conducted in a stacked/concurrent manner with Health Canada and with pCPA negotiation pathways. 

9. Establish a single-window navigator within CDA-AMC

Create a dedicated navigator function to serve as a single point of contact for sponsors throughout the HTA process. This role would enable structured engagement at key milestones, clarify expectations, support complete submissions and help reduce time to completion while accounting for the unique evidence challenges of novel therapies.

10. Role and mandate of the pan-Canadian Pharmaceutical Alliance (pCPA)

Canada should review its pricing policies and pricing frameworks for innovative drugs in consideration of the current geopolitical context, including the current focus on net prices, as well as Canadian sovereignty and security of supply.

The pCPA should consider the full value of innovation while exercising its mandate to negotiate prices and increase access to clinically effective treatments. In doing so, it should consider including the broader patient, economic and societal impact while recognizing the global competitive pricing environment.

The pCPA should stack its processes with those of the CDA-AMC and Health Canada to address the access timeline for patients.

The pCPA should review its mandate and processes regarding its negotiation approach, including the current consensus-based approach.

The pCPA should work with provinces and territories to review the processes regarding the Letter of Engagement and those following the signing of a Letter of Intent (LOI), with a target of achieving listing agreements in a timely manner, such as within 30 to 60 days, following the LOI.

11. Pricing – Patented Medicines Regulations (PMRs) and the Patented Medicines Prices Review Board (PMPRB)

The Government of Canada should quickly consider whether the current model of international price referencing and price monitoring of list prices of patented medicines conducted by the PMPRB remains appropriate and relevant.
Consideration should also be given to modernizing and migrating the current reporting requirements regarding R&D, which reference an outdated 1987 definition, with a view to capturing the full economic and societal benefits of R&D investments in Canada.

Clinical trials environment and competitiveness

Clinical trials often provide life changing and lifesaving medicines to people in Canada, are an important source of foreign direct investment and private sector R&D activity and serve to power further drug development in Canada. Clinical trial performance in Canada is linked to the capacity of companies to launch new medicines, including the environment for pricing and market access. The chairs of the task force make the following recommendations with the overarching objective enhancing the global competitiveness of Canada’s clinical trial infrastructure and networks as well as ensure the preservation and growth of clinical trial activity across the country.

12. Preserve 30-day CTA review standard

Maintain and actively promote Health Canada’s 30-day Clinical Trial Application review timeline as a key global competitive advantage to attract investment and trials and avoid changes that could introduce delays or uncertainty.

13. Implement pan-Canadian ethics review and contracting

Establish national harmonization of research ethics approvals, and standardize contracting frameworks and operational procedures across institutions to eliminate duplication, reduce start-up delays and enable efficient multi-site clinical trials.

14. Improve national trial coordination and implement a single-window concierge service

Enhance coordination across jurisdictions and adopt risk-based approaches to trial design and approvals to support early-phase and complex trials aligned with global best practices.

15. Invest in national clinical trials infrastructure platform and capacity growth

Scale coordinated national infrastructure, including sites, qualified personnel and standardized processes to increase capacity and improve competitiveness, coordination and performance.

16. Promote and fund high impact clinical trials, including global trials with Canadian research leadership.

17. Adjust Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax incentives criteria to stimulate investment in clinical trials

Consider adjusting federal SR&ED tax incentives eligibility restrictions for non-Canadian controlled corporations to provide tax incentives for both domestic and multinational firms to prioritize Canada for their clinical trial activities (emulating Australian R&D tax credit).

Data infrastructure and AI

The chairs of the task force make the following recommendations with the overarching objective of developing a world-leading nation-wide health data infrastructure to support clinical trials, measure health outcomes, generate healthcare system efficiencies and fuel creation and scaling of health IT companies.

18. Advance national coordination of health data and Real-World Evidence (RWE) and develop pan-Canadian real-time data architecture.

Build on recently announced major investments in the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) and VITAL health data platform to deliver a sovereign pan-Canadian data infrastructure enabling real-time interoperable data use and scale, including federated models enabling cross-jurisdictional analysis, integrated data across the full patient journey, and government frameworks allowing responsible private sector participation.

19. Leverage nation-wide health data infrastructure

Leverage national health data infrastructure to enable adaptive and digitally enabled trials, real-world evidence trials, enhanced measurement of health innovation outcomes and system impact, the generation of healthcare system efficiencies and the creation and scaling of health IT companies in Canada.

20. Collaborate with other countries (middle powers) on health data related applications encompassing storage, governance, interoperability and secure exchange of health data. 

21. Support the development of health AI for decision-making, risk prediction, public health surveillance, health system planning, emergency response and research.

Strengthen translational research

The task force makes the following recommendations with the overarching objective of enhancing translational research efforts through aligned funding, coordinated governance, industry-academic coordination from discovery through commercialization.

22. Establish a federal coordination function for translational health research to overcome fragmentation and better align infrastructure and funding

Develop a horizontal governance mechanism bridging health and innovation portfolios across departments to overcome fragmentation and align infrastructure and funding with programs, and leverage this approach to incentivize industry-academic collaboration.

23. Address translational funding and coordination gaps

Improve alignment, stability and accountability across translational research programs to bridge gaps from discovery to clinical development and patient access.

24. Implement Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)-like program

Strengthen and expand existing programs that support the full life sciences innovation continuum, from discovery and translational research through commercialization and scale-up. Consider a Canadian version of the U.S. SBIR program that is integrated, procurement-linked and scaled to support full commercialization pathways.

25. Strengthen company incubation infrastructure in key innovation hubs

Invest in purpose-built translational and company incubation infrastructure of biohub facilities in adjacent locations to major academic health science centres to better support company formation and scaling.

26. Federal tax credit program for angel/seed investments in life science start-ups

Consider a federal tax credit program for investors who make capital investments in early-stage companies (emulating the BC venture capital tax credit).

27. Leverage VCCI program to stimulate private investment in Canadian-based VC funds

Leverage the Government of Canada Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative (VCCI) to stimulate private investment in Canadian-based earlier-stage venture capital funds focused on life sciences.

Scaling Canadian-based life sciences anchor companies

The creation of the Canada Strong Fund and the parallel mandate review of federal financing entities create an opportunity to implement a coherent late-stage scale-up architecture for life sciences that addresses the current capital market inefficiency problem by balancing start-up with scale-up capital, setting ambitious economic growth objectives and aligning cohesive programs accordingly. The chairs of the task force make the following recommendations with the overarching objective of attracting domestic sources of late-stage capital to foster the emergence of Canadian commercial-stage life sciences anchor companies.

28. Develop a nationally anchored late-stage scale-up capital vehicle

Establish a nationally anchored late-stage scale-up capital vehicle for life sciences which could be delivered through a dedicated life-sciences investment sleeve within the Canada Strong Fund or via an expanded mandate of the Canada Growth Fund. Such a vehicle should provide persistent, long-duration domestic capital.

29. Attract late-stage scale-up capital from Canadian Pension funds

Leverage Venture Capital Catalyst Initiative (VCCI) to attract participation from Canadian pension funds and insurers as limited partners in Canadian-based late-stage venture funds focused on life sciences.

30. Develop industrial strategy for supporting anchor companies

Define and operationalize a clear concept of “Canadian anchor companies,” with criteria tied to Canadian headquarters, leadership presence, IP retention and domestic economic footprint. Align federal programs and incentives to support firms that commit to scaling and commercializing in Canada, with explicit expectations around retained IP, jobs and infrastructure.

31. Develop a Canada-first regulatory strategy for supporting potential anchor firms

Make regulation a competitive advantage for late-stage Canadian life sciences firms by improving regulatory speed, predictability and clinical trial coordination, strengthening Canada’s attractiveness for scale-up and manufacturing investment. The policy should also consider leveraging federal procurement programs as a demand side complement to scale-up capital for supporting the development of anchor firms.

32. Canadian biotechnology index of publicly-traded companies

Consider establishing a Canadian biotechnology index on public markets to support capital formation and attract investor interest, potentially launched, hosted or benchmarked through NASDAQ given its deep investor base, strong familiarity with biotechnology business models, and comparatively efficient access to capital for life sciences companies.

Health sovereignty and industrial strategy

33. Conduct national mapping of life sciences assets

Undertake comprehensive mapping of domestic infrastructure, capabilities and gaps to inform investment and sovereignty strategy.

34. Prioritize strategic sectors and niche areas

Identify and focus on high-performing and high-potential domains to strengthen domestic capabilities and competitiveness.

35. Strengthen Canada’s ecosystem and investment alignment

Establish a product policy framework which creates market certainty for medicines that have investments in Canada.

Align regulatory, access and investment policies to support Canadian R&D, manufacturing, scale-up and commercialization activities of domestic and multinational companies to promote long-term ecosystem sustainability and vitality.

36. Strengthen procurement tools

Improve the commercial environment to support and sustain domestic investment and supply capabilities.

37. Pursue international partnerships for supply diversification

Develop partnerships with trusted countries to ensure resilient and diversified sourcing of pharmaceuticals.

38. Maintain balanced ecosystem and consistent standards for both domestic and multinational firms

Ensure policies support contributions of both domestic companies and multinationals to system resilience, including globally competitive market access and IP policies in Canada.
Engage on specific next steps for life sciences under Canada’s Defence Industrial Strategy with particular focus on active pharmaceutical ingredients, vaccines and critical medicines.

Recommendations on system integration, governance and implementation

39. Establish implementation teams

The Government of Canada should ensure timely implementation and execution of the above recommendations by creating without delay a mandate for four dedicated implementation teams constituted of public and private sector members with technical experience and expertise to further define and develop a plan for implementation of task force recommendations. These teams would report to an overarching body that would oversee the process, ensure overall alignment and monitor implementation progress and target achievement.

• Regulatory Modernization, Pricing and Reimbursement team to address recommendation areas 1 and 2.
• Clinical Trials, Data Infrastructure/AI and Translational Research team to address recommendation areas 3, 4 and 5 and its intersections with recommendation area 2.
• Canadian-Based Life Sciences Anchor Company Scaling team to address recommendation area 6.
• Health Sovereignty & Industrial Strategy team to address recommendation area 7.

The chairs of the task force recommend that the Government of Canada prioritize these recommendations as follows: within 0-3 months, within 6-9 months, and 9+ months.

• Within 3 months all recommendations regarding Health Canada, CDA, pCPA and PMPRB, and establish the identified technical working groups, as well as the overarching body to oversee the process and measure and report on implementation.
• Within 3-9 months all recommendations regarding health sovereignty and Canada’s industrial strategy, data, infrastructure, AI, translational research and scaling Canadian-based life sciences anchor companies, as well as all recommendations related to the clinical trials environment and competitiveness.
• From 9 months onwards continue ongoing implementation monitoring and reporting of the task force recommendations by the overarching responsible body.

Significant economic and health sovereignty outcomes for Canada

The co-chairs would like to highlight the productive dialogue on general principles among task force members on industry strengths, main challenges and emerging recommendations. There is also a strong alignment on the need for timely action and a coordinated collective effort. A piecemeal approach will not deliver expected outcomes. There is also a shared sense that many elements of the strategy leverage existing strategic infrastructure, several on-going Health Canada and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada regulatory policy initiatives, as well as fixes to existing federal and provincial programs that have demonstrated effectiveness.

Successful implementation of the strategy will require development of new policy initiatives and program investments in all key areas, but can borrow best practices and benchmarks from foreign jurisdictions (such as the U.S., European Union and Australia).

The task force believes that successful implementation of recommendations and execution of strategy can yield significant short and longer term economic, R&D and productivity growth for Canada.

• Foreign direct investments of global pharmaceutical companies resulting from policy implementation and ecosystem improvements could yield multi-billion dollar investments in domestic manufacturing capacity from innovative manufacturers.
• Incremental clinical trial R&D spending could exceed $2.0 billion annually and create thousands of jobs assuming restoration of Canada’s historical 6% market share of global clinical trials.
• The longer-term development of two or three commercial-stage Canadian life sciences anchor firms with market cap of $50 billion could generate significant annual revenues of $5-10 billion, annual R&D expenditures of $2-4 billion and over 10,000 quality jobs.
• National health data architecture and AI strategy could yield additional revenues derived from health IT company growth, real-world evidence data as well as multi-billion dollar savings from health care system cost efficiencies.
• Significant additional system impacts from improved and equitable patient health outcomes, health emergency readiness, health sovereignty and pharmaceutical supply security.