Manitoba lobbying hard for headquarters of new Canadian Public Health Agency

Manitoba is hauling out its heavy artillery in a bid to become the locale for the headquarters of the new Canadian Public Health Agency. A delegation led by premier Gary Doer staged a two-day blitz of Ottawa earlier this month to lobby for Winnipeg as the location of choice, citing the city as the home of the National Microbiology Laboratory (NML), thriving biotechnology industry and its globally renowned expertise in infections diseases research.

Doer was accompanied by several high-profile leaders of the academic and business sectors, including Dr Frank Plummer, NML scientific DG, and John Langstaff, president/CEO of Cangene Corp, the province’s largest biomedical firm. At stake is the so-called command and control centre for a planned network of public health centres. The headquarters is prized as a major addition to any city’s health care and health research infrastructure and Winnipeg is competing against the likes of Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver.

Winnipeg’s main drawing card is the NML, operated by Health Canada within the Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health. Touted as the only Level 4 containment facility in the world focussing on both humans and animals, it is being referenced repeatedly by the backers of the Winnipeg bid.

“A Level 4 lab costs $400 million to build and we already have one. We have all the scientists in Winnipeg collaborating all over the world with other scientists,” says Doer. “We do not have the time to delay this decision in our view.”

The Agency’s headquarters won’t add to the research already being conducted by the city’s 300 scientists specializing in infectious diseases. But Dr Joanne Keselman, Univ of Manitoba VP research, is confident that its presence would open up a wide range of new opportunities.

“The hub of a national public health centre being in Manitoba would create an incredible amount of opportunity for new research and collaboration in the area of public health,” she says. “It would certainly have a positive impact on every sector of Winnipeg and Manitoba. That would be industrial and academic and it would be a stimulus for local economic development.”

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