Government initiatives provide leadership and other benefits to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.

Canada is a rather unique country. It draws its cultural and demographic experiences primarily from Western Europe and the United States, though in recent years the influence of Asia has also been prominent. As a result, Canada has tended to be less ideologically conservative than the United States, to the extent that some might claim socialist leanings. Regardless, Canadian governments take an active role in industry and are not usually as laissez-faire as its southern neighbors.

From a cleanroom or controlled environment perspective, the Federal and Provincial Governments both operate cleanrooms and promote technology based industries that dominate these environments. Both levels of government have continued to support research and development that promotes high technology discoveries and the resulting employment spin-offs. This support is multi-faceted, and can be either passive, including tax incentives for research and development, or hands-on, including both federally or provincially operated cleanrooms.

GOVERNMENTAL SUPPORT
The passive governmental support in Canada can also be divided into either federal or provincial factions, and as a result the methods dif differ substantially. On the federal level, government has enacted and supports industry-specific groups through Industry Canada, a division of the Ministry of Industry. Some of the groups promoted include Biote Canada, a portal to disseminate biotech news, financing, and technology transfer. Similarly, Industry Canada has also created the Life Sciences Trade Network. It provides information about target markets, intelligence about business opportunities, including assistance in trade fairs and missions in addition to other matchmaking events. In real terms, this consists of promotion and technical assistance at trade fairs such as BIO 2009, which will be held at the Georgia World Congress Centre in Atlanta, GA and is billed as the world’s largest, global biotechnology conference, and at MEDICA in Düsseldorf, Germany, representing Canada’s medical device manufacturing sector.

The federal government has also lead with progressive patent legislation and protection that has garnered growth for both major and smaller pharmaceutical manufacturers. These firms are supported through a government encouraged association called Canada’s Research-Based Pharmaceutical Companies (Rx&D), which is a national association representing over 50 research-based pharmaceutical companies in Canada. So as not to promote favoritism, the federal government also supports the Canadian Generic Pharmaceutical Association (CGPA). CGPA represents manufacturers and distributors of finished generic pharmaceutical products, manufacturers, and distributors of active pharmaceutical chemicals, and suppliers of other goods and services to the generic pharmaceutical industry.