Canada-UK joint declaration: "A stronger partnership for the 21st century"

Yesterday saw the signing of a joint declaration by the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and Canada. As part of a wider North American trip, David Cameron made a brief visit to Ottawa yesterday and signed the Canada-UK joint declaration entitled A stronger partnership for the 21st century. Of particular interest to the Science and Innovation Network are paragraphs 8, 10 and 11:

We look forward to concluding a joint innovation statement leveraging existing resources to facilitate late-stage research collaborations, stimulate commercialisation partnerships, and foster an entrepreneurial community between our countries in order to drive economic growth and address global challenges.

Exploiting the fact that Canada and the UK are global leaders in health research, including regenerative medicine and cell therapy, we will use existing initiatives and mechanisms to foster collaboration, facilitating the translation of our advanced knowledge into life-changing therapies that will benefit our patients, healthcare institutions and industries.

We will encourage the development of technology systems necessary for commercial-scale electricity production from marine energy. We plan to lead the world in moving forward from pilot wave and tidal energy devices to exploring actual power generation stations connected to our respective electricity grids.

As regular blog readers will know, we here at SIN Canada have been quite active in the fields of regenerative medicine and marine renewable energy. This statement by the Prime Ministers underscores the importance of our work, and highlights two of many areas in which British and Canadian expertise complement each other. Stronger cross-Atlantic collaboration in research and innovation confers benefits on everybody, including the people who will eventually benefit from scientific and technological advancement.