The BAM Life Sciences Policy Summit is where Manitoba’s bioscience leaders, policymakers, and innovators come together to shape the future of the life sciences sector. This half-day event will spark meaningful dialogue, align priorities, and strengthen collaboration across industry, government, and academia. Through thought-provoking keynotes and in-depth panel discussions, the Summit will explore current policy challenges, emerging opportunities, and strategies to support sustainable growth and innovation. Attendees will gain valuable insights into how provincial and national policies impact Manitoba’s bioscience ecosystem, and how collaboration can help drive progress. Hosted by Bioscience Association Manitoba (BAM), the Policy Summit plays a vital role in advancing Manitoba’s position as a leader in life sciences, creating a shared vision for investment, innovation, and long-term success
Clinical Trials – Panel
This panel brings together patient perspectives and clinical trial expertise to explore what access to trials really looks like in practice. With voices ranging from patient advocates to professionals working directly in clinical research, the discussion will focus on what it takes to move research from concept to clinic, common challenges, and where opportunities exist to strengthen trial capacity and collaboration.
Procurement of Innovation – Panel
This panel examines how innovative life sciences solutions move from idea to adoption, with a focus on the realities of procurement across sectors. Panellists will share perspectives on navigating complex purchasing processes, aligning innovation with system needs, and building pathways that allow new technologies to reach the organizations and communities they are designed to serve.
Life Science Debate – Panel
This moderated debate brings together sector leaders with experience in the life sciences sector. Panellists will tackle big picture questions facing the industry, including how policy, partnerships, and funding models shape progress. Expect thoughtful discussion, real-world examples, and a forward-looking conversation about where the life sciences sector is headed.
Keynote Presentation – Forging a New Paradigm for Biosecurity Governance
We are at the beginning of a paradigm shift in biosecurity and biosafety governance. Governments are seeing the limitations of their reactive, fragmented systems that prioritize performative compliance with limited means to measure or improve safety and security outcomes. Companies and universities are caught in this compliance trap but eager to safely expand biotechnology into domains—like manufacturing or ecosystem management—that are well outside the original scope of extant oversight. Governance reform, however, cannot simply expand on existing measures, because those measures are based on a set of assumptions about science, security, and the role of the state that do not hold for much of our modern environment. In this talk, I outline those assumptions, how they are baked into current governing structures, and how they come up short. I then outline a new paradigm for biosecurity and biosafety governance that is forming within policy circles, and show how it can turn our reactive and fragmented oversight into a proactive system that works for national security, economic vitality, and cultural prosperity. I close with a call to action for all who want to be a part of this paradigm shift.