BIOTECanada’s 2018 Biotechnology Industry Data Survey

Communicating the strengths and connectedness of the Canadian biotech ecosystem was a driving objective behind the BIOTECanada Ecosystem paper.

2018 is shaping up to be a critical year in the context of the industry’s policy environment. Recent developments on the federal public policy front underscore the importance of this second phase of the Ecosystem project. In addition to developing materials to enable industry leaders to tell the industry story, Ecosystem 2.0 will address a longstanding need, namely: access to quantifiable industry economic data. Despite significant industry growth over the past decade, the last robust national data set collected on the Canadian life sciences industry was the 2005 Statistics Canada Biotechnology Uses & Development Survey. Since then, Canada has been lacking prime data points to measure the national footprint of the industry. This is a significant gap which BIOTECanada is undertaking to fill by establishing a long-term, consistent mechanism that will collect reliable data and enable analysis on the economic value of the industry, and the biotech investment dynamic (access to capital etc.) in Canada.

To this end, BIOTECanada has engaged Deloitte LLP to identify key metrics that will quantify the industry’s economic and social importance. In this context, Deloitte has developed a survey for member companies which will collect key data points on the Canadian life sciences industry (life sciences, agriculture and industrial) including its economic output, employment characteristics, research and development activity, and investment trends.

The survey will take approximately 15 minutes and will help greatly in improving our understanding and ability to communicate the benefits of the sector. In the interests of confidentiality, all answers will be anonymized and aggregated in the final report.