Harper Government Funds Quebec Biotechnology Innovation Centre

LAVAL, QUEBEC--(Marketwire - Nov. 9, 2011) - Acting on behalf of the Honourable Denis Lebel, Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities and Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec, Jacques Gourde, Member of Parliament for Lotbinière–Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, today announced that the Quebec Biotechnology Innovation Centre (QBIC) has been granted funding to pursue its mission.

"Our government is pleased to lend its financial assistance to the Quebec Biotechnology Innovation Centre," said Mr. Gourde. "This support organization for innovative life sciences and health technology startups makes an important contribution to economic growth and job creation in the region."

The QBIC, a business incubator specializing in the life sciences and health technology sector, helps entrepreneurs through the initial stages of business development by offering them consulting services, funding and training. To date, the centre's pre-incubation and incubation programs have helped bring about the establishment of 36 enterprises, which together generate some $73 million in annual revenues and provide employment to 714 people, most of them researchers and specialists. Since its foundation in 1995, the QBIC has helped create a life sciences and health technology hub in the greater Montréal region and highlight the expertise developed in these sectors.

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This $1,440,000 in non-repayable funding has been granted through Canada Economic Development's Business and Regional Growth program. The QBIC intends to use this assistance to implement a three-year strategy aimed at attracting new foreign enterprises, better promoting the guidance services it offers and fostering the development in Laval of new growth sectors like health technologies and bio-food. These actions should eventually enable the QBIC to rival other business incubators both here and abroad. Since 1998, Canada Economic Development has granted more than $6.6 million in funding to the QBIC.

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BACKGROUNDER

Business and Regional Growth

Laval-Laurentides-Lanaudière

The Business and Regional Growth program strengthens the conditions conducive to the sustainable growth of Quebec's regions and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Administered by the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec, this program centres on two main components: SME Competitiveness and Sectoral and Regional Growth.
The Agency's priority for Laval–Laurentides–Lanaudière is to support projects that promote the development of the following sectors:

• aerospace
• new materials
• new information technologies
• metal products
• life sciences
• environmental technologies
• tourism
• food processing

Preference is given to the following types of intervention:

• productivity support
• innovation support
• export support