RE: Pharmaceutical industry spending on R&D in Canada
References
Innovative Medicines Canada. Industry fact check. 2021 [Available from: https://194.233.65.84/CMFiles/Our%20Industry/Industry%20Facts/2014-06-20_RxD_RD_Report_FINAL_EN.pdf]
Investment Science and Technology Division Statistics Canada. The Canadian Research and Development Pharmaceutical Sector, 2020. 2023 [Available from: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-621-m/11-621-m2023001-eng.htm]
Lauren Vogel’s news story (Resignations at Canada’s drug pricing panel raise independence questions) mentions that the pharmaceutical industry hasn’t kept its promise to reinvest 10% of Canadian sales in research and development. The industry’s defence for this alleged failure is almost always that value of R&D is being calculated using the outdated 1987 definition of what qualifies for scientific research and experimental development (SR&ED) tax credits.(1)
Recently Statistics Canada has teamed up with Innovative Medicines Canada, the organization representing most of the major pharmaceutical companies operating in Canada, to produce the annual study “The Canadian Research and Development Pharmaceutical Sector”, the 2020 version of which was recently released.(2) In this report, Statistics Canada notes that total R&D expenditures can only be estimated as a range in order to avoid double-counting and it gives 2020 spending by IMC companies as $0.987 billion to $1.4 billion. Revenue for IMC companies in 2020 was $17.7 billion. Therefore, according to a report endorsed by IMC, companies were spending 5.6% to 7.9% of revenue on R&D. Those figures are still short of the promised 10%.
References
1. Innovative Medicines Canada. Industry fact check. 2021 [Available from: https://194.233.65.84/CMFiles/Our%20Industry/Industry%20Facts/2014-06-20...
2. Investment Science and Technology Division Statistics Canada. The Canadian Research and Development Pharmaceutical Sector, 2020. 2023 [Available from: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-621-m/11-621-m2023001-eng.htm]