Here is why we don’t have vaccine production capacity in Canada
Concern is growing that Canada may not be at the head of the line when COVID-19 vaccines become available. The Leader of the Opposition may be quick to blame our current Liberal government as we watch Americans, Germans and Brits getting vaccinated while we wait. Those who understand how cutting-edge products and technologies come into being will know better.
The cycle is fairly simple. Let’s start with the people who benefit from breakthrough products and technologies. These people pay taxes to government. In Canada, through national research councils, the federal government gives grants to university professors who supervise graduate students and postgraduate fellows.
Those people publish new knowledge from their discoveries. Companies apply that knowledge to develop new technologies and products. Which brings us full circle to taxpayers who benefit.
Except for this. Companies will partner with universities to better understand those discoveries. To create partnerships with leading-edge university researchers, companies will build their development facilities in the same community.
Silicon Valley is probably the most famous hub of pure research in partnership with product developers. In Canada, Research In Motion maintained close ties to the University of Waterloo. In North Carolina, BMW partners with automotive researchers at Clemson.
When Stephen Harper was prime minister, he had a choice of strategically funding research of interest to various sectors. Pharmaceuticals could be one; transportation another. No one has a working crystal ball, but some sectors seem like pretty sure bets for economic development.
The Harper government, however, drastically cut funding to research councils, which in turn gave out fewer and smaller grants to support graduate students and postgraduate fellows with heads full of knowledge and a drive to discover.
So some gave up on a career in research. Some went elsewhere. And where funds for labs and smart people were available and new knowledge was being published, companies set up their shops nearby.
That’s why Canada does not have a major pharmaceutical company developing a vaccine to fight COVID-19. We could have if we had chosen to fund those people who spend so many hours at a time in their lab that they don’t know if it’s day or night. We could have if we had spent more on spectroscopes and supercomputers that let those people know what is happening when certain molecules are forced together.
Does Canada have a research and development strategy today so we won’t be in the same situation 25 years from now? That’s what Erin O’Toole should be asking when he stands up in question period.
John Carrington retired after more than 20 years in news services and public affairs at the University of Windsor where he wrote about research in automotive technology, the Great Lakes environment, biotechnology and much more. He lives in Port Dover.