In the aftermath of the municipal elections in Québec, I feel that the face of proximity politics is changing with more women and young people now holding mayoral roles in major cities in Québec. This is great news! I can see changes at the local level on important issues like environmental protection or housing, for example. What remains the same, however, is the limited leverage municipalities seem to have to support a sector like life sciences. Municipal tax adjustments have little impact on the majority of our companies, and the same is true for zoning and urban planning. However, support for entrepreneurship is an area in which certain cities are investing. What is your level of knowledge and appreciation of these programs in Montréal and the metropolis? How could they evolve in the future? What are some examples of success stories we can learn from?
Montréal is still in the running to attract Moderna’s biomanufacturing plant. In this case, as in other biomanufacturing projects in Montréal, access to talent is the number one attraction factor. It is with this in mind that we recently organized, in partnership with McGill University, a rallying event: Biomanufacturing, an expertise to develop. What a huge success it was! More than 115 people attended, showing an interest and a need to regroup around the issues of workforce, training and research in biomanufacturing. One of the conclusions I drew from the discussions is that we need to have a clear and quantified picture of the future needs for personnel specialized in biomanufacturing in the existing and future companies. We need to better identify the skill profiles sought and cross-reference this data with an inventory of the available training and the number of professionals who could be trained for each skill profile. We will therefore be able to identify where the gaps exist in order to meet business needs in the next three to five years. And from there, put in place tailored strategies to close those gaps. Will we need more training programs? More students in existing programs? More specialized immigration?
Basically, this is a wonderful project to implement for Montréal InVivo and its partners in the ecosystem…