Biotech Sovereignty: Canada’s Next Strategic Imperative
Opinion piece by Dr. Maura Campbell, President and CEO, OBIO®
The country excels at generating research and patents, but too often falls short in commercialization, scale-up, and retaining ownership of intellectual property.
The current geopolitical and economic environment presents both significant challenges and opportunities for Canada’s biotech sector. Global supply chain disruptions, shifting international alliances and growing emphasis on domestic innovation have reinforced the need for greater Canadian sovereignty in therapeutic products. Strengthening the biotech sector is therefore not only an economic opportunity but also a strategic and national security imperative.
Against this backdrop, the federal government’s pharmaceutical and life sciences task force arrived at a pivotal moment. As Canada responds to U.S. drug pricing policies, the task force was charged with a dual mandate: ensuring reliable and sustainable access to medicines while advancing made-in-Canada solutions that drive innovation, competitiveness and long-term growth. These objectives are deeply interconnected. Building a stronger domestic life sciences sector can both improve access to medicines and position Canada as a global leader across the life sciences value chain.
The task force acknowledged the challenges facing the sector. Over the past 15 years, 21 Canadian life sciences companies have been acquired by foreign firms, highlighting the country's difficulty in scaling and retaining homegrown innovation. While the final report included 39 recommendations, most focused on regulatory approvals, drug pricing and reimbursement, clinical trial oversight and data collection. Only five recommendations specifically addressed the growth of Canadian-based life sciences anchor companies.
Canada must do more to convert scientific excellence into commercial success. The country excels at generating research and patents, but too often falls short in commercialization, scale-up and retaining ownership of intellectual property. A stronger domestic biotech industry depends on moving discoveries out of public institutions and into Canadian companies capable of developing and commercializing them.
A critical gap exists between the identification of a promising innovation and its readiness for clinical trials, manufacturing and significant private investment. At this stage, companies must generate supporting evidence, establish scalable production processes, meet regulatory requirements, protect intellectual property, build specialized teams and prepare for market entry. These activities require substantial capital and expertise. Too often, promising Canadian innovations stall at this point or migrate to jurisdictions with deeper pools of capital and more coordinated support systems.
For biotech startups, the problem is rarely a shortage of breakthrough science. Canada produces world-class research and talent. The greater obstacle is transforming scientific discoveries into globally competitive companies. Unlike many technology startups, biotech firms require substantial and sustained investment to support preclinical research, clinical trials, regulatory approvals, manufacturing scale-up and commercialization. While many Canadian companies can secure seed financing, they often struggle to raise the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars needed for late-stage development. As a result, promising firms frequently sell early to foreign acquirers, license their intellectual property abroad, or relocate to larger U.S. biotech hubs. We need to do everything we can to encourage and incentivize building out our biomanufacturing capacity to keep companies in Canada.
Despite these issues, Canada possesses important competitive advantages. The task force highlighted strengths in science-intensive fields such as mRNA technology, radiopharmaceuticals, vaccines, cell and gene therapies, antimicrobials and artificial intelligence. The challenge now is to translate these publicly funded strengths into globally competitive Canadian companies, increased private investment, expanded domestic manufacturing, highly skilled jobs and long-term economic prosperity.
The Advanced Therapeutics Industrial Acceleration Partnership (ATIAP) is a turnkey response to the challenge. Four established Canadian organizations, Stem Cell Network, Capital BioVentures, OBIO® and CASTL, are ready to partner and integrate their existing capabilities into one national, milestone-based pipeline. ATIAP would support the highest-potential Canadian cell and gene therapy innovations in regenerative medicine within academia and biotech through clinical preparation, early trials, manufacturing readiness, commercialization, capital readiness and workforce development.
The choice is clear: Canada can continue investing in research only to see too much of the resulting intellectual property, companies, and economic value leave the country, or it can use Budget 2026 to ensure that Canadian public investment yields lasting benefits for Canadians.
Dr. Maura Campbell is President and CEO of OBIO®, a not-for-profit, membership-based organization offering programming and infrastructure to support early-stage and venture-backed companies across the therapeutics, medtech, diagnostics, digital health and consumer health sectors. Founded in 2009, OBIO® enables companies to raise capital, hire and train industry-ready talent, facilitate the commercialization and adoption of their technologies in health systems, and access infrastructure.