It's nice to have the money to fund vaccine making overseas. I'd prefer my country to have its own capabilities in both vaccine research and vaccine manufacture. Canada is no longer the country that once gave insulin to the world. We need to (and can) change a few things to get back on track.
Which 21st century industry does Canada have world-leading capabilities in? Semiconductors? EVs and solar? Biosimilars? Internet platforms? Healthcare IT? Fintech? Smart manufacture and IoT?
The answer is none of the above... we are an also-ran.
It's great to be a rich first world country, of course. But if you're not creating value yourself, you are paying somebody else to do it for you, and at some point you start running out of money to do so. What does Canada have? A bunch of cozy oligopolies in banking and telecom, commodities, some real estate and construction, service industries which cannot be outsourced to India or China, and uncompetitive manufacturing.
Number of unicorns by country (let's leave the US, China and India out):
• Unicorns by country 2021 | Statista
UK 27
Germany 15
Korea 11
Israel 11
Brazil 10
Canada... 4
Incredibly, this has nothing to do with lack of funding. See here...
Narwhals and Unicorns— Where are Canada’s Billion Dollar Startups? | by Lawrence | Medium. "Canada receives the second most venture capital funding amongst OECD countries on an absolute basis, as a percentage of GDP and per capita. Measured against other OECD countries, Canada produces the least number of unicorns and narwhals."
It's time to stop wearing lack of ambition like some badge of honor. And what's worse is telling ambitious new immigrants that lack of ambition is the Canadian way. Because it's not. A key part of what got Canada into the club of wealthy countries was the drive and innovation of earlier generations of immigrants. This has nothing to do with universal healthcare, which both the UK and Germany provide their citizens, or being a country that takes care of its weak/poor. This is about the worrying trend of turning into a society, that values proclaiming wokeness above being productive.