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Branding Moncton as a life sciences community would attract investment, research

MONCTON - A dialogue in Moncton has begun over the development of a life sciences cluster that stakeholders say would bring high-paying jobs and private investment to the province.

Enterprise Greater Moncton, the local economic development agency, has already polled industry leaders on interest and has applied for funding to commission a study on the region's potential.

"We need to ensure that we look at that sector and we understand it and we understand where our strengths are and find out where we can build on those strengths," said outgoing president and CEO John J. Thompson.

Ben Champoux, Moncton's business development specialist, said the region has a strong science presence but needs to invest in promoting it.

"We already have it, it's just a matter of being more conscious of it from all the key players and co-ordinating our efforts to brand Moncton as a life sciences, health research, cancer research community," Champoux said, listing the area's two hospitals, the Atlantic Cancer Research Institute and medical school at Université de Moncton as key components.

Champoux said identifying a cluster in Moncton would bring funds and workers to the province and area.

"Branding Moncton as a life sciences community would attract investment, would attract researchers," Champoux said.

"Now, because of labour force trends, the new generations of well-educated people can find work wherever they want. They're attracted to communities that are proactive," he said.

Enterprise Greater Moncton's work is the first step in forming a plan for the region and a component in setting New Brunswick apart as a centre for research in science and technology, said Dr. Rodney Ouellette, CEO of the Atlantic Cancer Research Institute.

He cites Charlottetown's success in forming a cluster around natural products and bioactive compounds - the Atlantic Canada Network on Bioactive Compounds - as a good example of academia partnering with the private sector and government to promote a region's strengths.

"There are hundreds of jobs in this sector, 180 PhDs in Charlottetown and tens of millions of dollars in research and development investment and sales," Ouellette said.

He said a health sciences sector in a small province like New Brunswick would only work if each region identified strengths, talents and needs and came up with a provincial plan to coordinate investment.

"It has to be a provincial thing," Ouellette said.

Bob Manning, the chairman of Enterprise Saint John, said the only way to prevent New Brunswick's regions from competing for resources to develop their own clusters around science would be to have a "comprehensive" review of the province's sciences assets.

"If you want it to be effective and efficient it should be led by the provincial leadership," Manning said.

Manning's agency has health sciences expansion as one of four goals in its strategic plan and sees its role in promoting the formation of the Atlantic Health Sciences Corporation as contributing to the beginning of Saint John's own cluster.

In the provincial government's throne speech Tuesday, Shawn Graham's Liberals committed to exploring the potential of technology clusters such as advanced learning, health and biosciences in the province.

BioAtlantech, a provincial biosciences industry group that is more than two-thirds of the way through its own biosciences inventory, has received some provincial money to fund its work.

The group's executive director, John Argall, said Enterprise Greater Moncton's proposed study is a good move before proposing the region try to build further on the notion of a cluster.

"I really believe that an inventory is a launch piece," Argall said.

Argall pointed to examples such as California's Silicon Valley, saying that in order for a cluster to occur, it has to happen "organically."

In other words, partners in academia, business and government need to have a reason to work together.

And their work has to be strong enough to serve national and international communities.

"In the R&D (research and development) field you have to be first class in something," Argall said.