I'd be curious what others with more experience in the innovation/commercialization world think, but it seems to me that we don't want to go back to the type of "vaccine nationalism" we had when Connaught was a crown corp or a @UofT-owned entity. The world has changed a lot

Given the tremendous resources and quality control that you need in order to compete on the world stage in vaccines, the two streams would be:
1. Lots of support for Canadian startups with great ideas (e.g., Medicago) that allows them to expand and compete, but also...

2. Making Canada a really attractive place to do vaccine science, and working with the big global players (Pfizer, GSK/Sanofi, Moderna now, Merck, J&J, etc etc) to make us a hub for research AND manufacture

Having global entities producing vaccines has some advantages: e.g., the ability to trial a vaccine in multiple countries at once. That's been really valuable with novel VOC's.

It's also a very competitive industry and it's tough to get market share. Development is expensive and as we're seeing with the covid vaccines, some candidates fail. Liability issues (doing something to healthy people which may harm 1/100,000) are always there.

And perhaps uniquely, vaccines are a product which, if good enough, can actually put themselves out of business (c.f. smallpox vaccine).As someone who doesn't know this world at all, this seems like something that requires big portfolios, deep pockets, and an ability to take risk

Curious what the knowledgeable folks have to say about this.