LSO Annual Ideas To Action Life Sciences Forum

LSO IDEAS TO ACTION LIFE SCIENCES FORUM 2025

Accelerating Competitiveness:  Reimagining Ontario’s Life Sciences in a Changing World

Tuesday, September 23rd

4:20-6:00 pm: Cocktail Reception & Networking with Guest Speaker 

Date: Tuesday, September 23rd

Time: 8 A.M – 5 P.M

Venue: The Arcadian, 401 Bay Street, Simpson Tower, 8th Floor, Toronto

Ticket Prices:

Member: $250.00 + HST
Non-Member: $350.00 + HST
Government / Student Member: $100 + HST
Virtual Attendee: $100 + HST

Speaker Bios

Timothy Caulfield

Timothy Caulfield is a Professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health, and Research Director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta. He was the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy for over 20 years (2002 – 2023). His interdisciplinary research on topics like stem cells, genetics, research ethics, the public representations of science, and public health policy has allowed him to publish almost 400 academic articles. He has won numerous academic, science communication, and writing awards, and is a Member of the Order Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He contributes frequently to the popular press and is the author of national bestsellers, including: The Cure for Everything: Untangling the Twisted Messages about Health, Fitness and Happiness (Penguin 2012); Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: When Celebrity Culture and Science Clash (Penguin 2015), and Relax, Dammit!: A User’s Guide to the Age of Anxiety (Penguin Random House, 2020).  His most recent book, a #1 national bestseller, is The Certainty Illusion: What You Don’t Know and Why It Matters (Penguin Random House, 2025). Caulfield is also the co-founder of the science engagement initiative #ScienceUpFirst and has written, hosted and produced documentaries, including the award-winning TV show, A User’s Guide to Cheating Death, which has been shown in over 60 countries, including streaming on Netflix in North America.

Connie Côté

Connie Côté has over twenty-five years of experience in the not-for-profit, regulatory, and charitable health sectors. She currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of the Health Charities Coalition of Canada (HCCC) and as a member of the Board of Directors for the Brockville General Hospital. In her role at HCCC, Ms. Côté leads national advocacy efforts focused on health research, health policy, and the integration of lived experience and community perspectives into health system decision-making.

Prior to her tenure at HCCC, she held several senior leadership roles at the Canadian Lung Association, where she notably directed the development and implementation of the National Lung Health Framework. Her previous professional experience also includes roles with the Federation of Medical Regulatory Authorities of Canada and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

Ms. Côté is recognized for her collaborative approach to leadership, her capacity to navigate organizational change, and her commitment to fostering strategic partnerships across disciplines and sectors.

Christine Elliott

Christine Elliott, former Ontario Minister of Health and Deputy Premier, is Counsel with the Fasken Health Law group in our Toronto office. With over 15 years of experience in public service, she is ideally positioned to assist clients with navigating existing and emerging complexities in the healthcare space.

During her tenure as Ontario’s Minister of Health from 2018 to 2022, Christine played an integral part in overseeing the province’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this role, she also sponsored The People’s Health Care Act and enacted the Connecting Care Act. The Connecting Care Act gave rise to Ontario Health, a Crown agency that merged the 14 Local Health Integration Network and other agencies including Cancer Care Ontario, Gift of Life Network, eHealth Ontario and HealthForce Ontario in order to facilitate integrated care delivery systems also known as local Ontario Health teams. Christine also served as Ontario’s Deputy Premier (2018 to 2022) and as Ontario’s first Patient Ombudsman (2016 to 2018).

Christine, along with her husband James Flaherty (Jim) was a founding partner of Flaherty, Dow, Elliott & McCarthy. Later, Christine and Jim co-founded Abilities Centre in Whitby, Ontario, which supports and celebrates the abilities of all people and is a place where everyone belongs, regardless of their challenges. In addition, she has held positions on a range of boards in the health care sector since becoming involved as a volunteer with several charities including the Lakeridge Health Whitby Foundation, Durham Mental Health Services, and Grandview Children’s Centre.

Christine graduated from the University of Western Ontario law school and was admitted to the Ontario Bar in 1980.

Dr. Douglas A. (Gus) Grant

Dr. Douglas A. (Gus) Grant is the Registrar and CEO of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Nova Scotia.

With degrees from Harvard in literature, McGill in law, and Dalhousie in medicine, Dr. Grant has practiced law and medicine in the United States and Canada.
Dr. Grant has held leadership roles on many national and provincial organizations. He is a Past President of the Federation of Medical Regulatory Authorities of Canada and is the chair of the Committee on Medical Licensure in Canada.
Dr. Grant is a co-author of the national Guidelines on the Use of Opioids for Chronic Non-Cancer Pain and served for many years as the chair of Nova Scotia Prescription Monitoring Program. Dr. Grant was a member of the Health Canada Task Force on Medical Assistance in Dying and has testified to the Senate and to House of Commons-Senate Joint Committees on MAID.

A proud Haligonian, Dr. Grant maintains an active interest in any areas where the circles of law, medicine and the humanities overlap. With knees too old for hockey, and with five children having almost all left the house, he chases golf balls and salmon without much success.

Sarah Letersky

Sarah Letersky is a Partner and National Health Practice Lead at Rubicon Strategy, a leading government relations firm advising clients in health care, life sciences, energy, and beyond. She brings over a decade of experience in public policy, communications, and government advocacy. Prior to joining Rubicon in 2020, Sarah held various senior roles in the Ford government, where she led policy development, stakeholder engagement, and crisis response across several complex files. At Rubicon, Sarah works closely with life sciences organizations to accelerate innovation, improve access, and drive health system transformation.

Cate Murray

Cate Murray is President and CEO for Canada’s Stem Cell Network (SCN). Cate is an experienced not-for-profit executive with a background in government relations, public policy and communications. Cate has been leading and growing the Stem Cell Network for nearly a decade. As the head of SCN, she has secured $117M in funding that is directly leading to cutting-edge research for the benefit of patients, contributing to the growth of Canada’s regenerative medicine sector, and ensuring next generation talent have the skills and expertise needed to compete on the global stage.  She has introduced SCN support for early-stage clinical trials and investments to directly support Canadian regenerative medicine biotech companies.

Cate began her career in the mid-90s as a Ministerial policy advisor. After leaving politics she joined the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) where she combined her knowledge of government and communications to support Canada’s health research community. Building on her experience at CIHR, Cate joined the Council of Canadian Academies as a member of the senior leadership team where she worked with over a dozen expert panels to raise awareness of their work and see its adoption into public policy.

Today, Cate leads a team of approximately 20 talented professionals, Board members, and stem cell and regenerative medicine scientists and scholars who share a passion for delivering Canadian innovations to patients. She serves on the strategic advisory committees for the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging and the Praxis Spinal Cord Institute. Cate is also a member of the Public Policy Forum’s Life Sciences Leadership Table and the Resilient Health Care Coalition.

Cate has an Honours Degree from King’s College at the University of Western Ontario. She is a mother of two daughters and stepmother to two sons. Cate is passionate about STEAM and lives by the mantra that every great scientist needs an arts major.

Suzanne McGurn 

Suzanne McGurn is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Canada’s Drug Agency. She leads the organization to deliver credible, objective evidence that helps inform decisions about the best use of drugs and health technologies in Canada. Suzanne joined the organization in July 2020 and is focused on enabling transformative change that helps support evidence-based health system decision-making.

Parimal Nathwani

A highly regarded life sciences industry leader and advocate with strong relationships across the academic and health research community, global industry, and investors, Parimal Nathwani has been with Toronto Innovation Acceleration Partners (TIAP) since its inception in 2008, first serving as Vice President and subsequently taking on the role of President and CEO in 2020. Parimal brings to TIAP more than 25 years of experience advancing health innovation including forming and scaling innovative new life sciences companies. His expertise includes technology transfer, intellectual property management, technology development, corporate finance, business development, alliance management and operations.

Parimal has been actively involved in launching and managing more than a dozen start-up companies with activities such as raising early-stage capital, establishing strategic partnerships, recruiting management and advisors, and driving in- and out-licensing activities. Under Parimal’s leadership, TIAP has launched impactful programs such as LAB150, a collaboration with global companies Evotec SE and Amgen that has brought considerable new financial and mentorship resources to Ontario’s life sciences ecosystem to accelerate early-stage drug development. Before joining TIAP, Parimal was a healthcare analyst with a boutique investment bank where he conducted equity research on publicly traded biotechnology companies in Canada and the U.S. He also led commercialization activities at BC Women’s and Children’s Hospital as part of his role at the University of British Columbia’s Industry Liaison Office.

Parimal started his career as a research scientist at a start-up biotechnology company involved in drug discovery targeting ABC Transporters. Parimal is currently Chair of Vasomune Therapeutics, a Director of Fibrocor Therapeutics, TRIUMF Innovations, and the Nanomedicine Innovation Network, and an Observer on the Boards of Zucara Therapeutics and Radiant Biotherapeutics. He received his MBA from Simon Fraser University and his M.Sc. from the University of British Columbia.

Stevie O’Brien

Stevie O’Brien is a seasoned government relations strategist, public policy advisor, and lawyer with over a decade of senior political experience. She has served as Chief of Staff to several cabinet ministers, including Public Services and Procurement Ministers Anita Anand and Filomena Tassi during Canada’s COVID-19 response, leading major vaccine and medical supply procurements, and to Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Reduction Bill Blair during cannabis legalization.

Stevie’s background includes senior campaign roles and advising corporations, associations, and non-profits on federal decision-making, policy shaping, and political risk. She is also a regular political commentator for Canadian and international news outlets.

Dr. Alison Symington

Dr. Alison Symington provides consultancy services to a variety of industry, academic and government clients in the area of life science strategy particularly in the development of new technologies with a focus on “omics”. She has facilitated strategic workshops, developed large scale funding proposals and worked with clients to obtain both dilutive and non-dilutive capital resulting in more than $500M in funding over the last 10 years. Clients include large academic institutions, not for profit innovation hubs, government, foundations and SMEs as well as international clients in the UK, USA and Australia.  Alison works across multiple sectors including healthcare, agriculture, natural resources and the environment.  In addition, she provides expert reviews on funding proposals that have been submitted to various levels of government. Previous to starting her own consultancy business, Alison was the Vice President, Research and Corporate Development at Ontario Genomics.  In this role, she was responsible not only for the development but also the management of large-scale research projects as well as external stakeholder engagement including government relations.

Alison was a Professor at Seneca where she taught molecular biology and biopharmaceutical development and also coordinated the post-graduate Regulatory and Quality Assurance program. Before joining Seneca College, she was the Manager of Viral Development Laboratory and a research scientist at Sanofi Pasteur for almost 10 years, where she led several new viral vaccine development processes from bench to clinical trials. She received her Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology in 1991.

Garrett Tone

Garrett Tone is the Executive Director, Life Sciences for Invest Ontario, the province’s economic development agency. Over the last 17 years, Garrett has held a variety of senior leadership roles for both large multinationals and health tech start-ups across an array of industries including MedTech, In-vitro Diagnostics and Biotech. He’s worked with clients around the world, namely the US, Europe, Asia and Australia and with his experience, Garrett brings a unique, well rounded and pan-industry approach to securing high-profile investments on behalf of the province.

Dr. Patrick Veit-Haibach

Dr. Veit-Haibach is a dual-certified Radiologist and Nuclear Medicine Physician currently working at the Joint Department Medical Imaging, Toronto. He completed Medical School in Germany, Switzerland, US and New Zealand. He spend his residency and training in Germany and mostly in Switzerland.

Dr. Veit-Haibach joined the JDMI in Toronto in April 2017 as the Director of PET/MR program.  Since then, he assumed the position of the Division Head Abdominal Imaging in JDMI, was also appointed afterwards as Deputy Radiologist-in-Chief and currently also serves as the Managing Director of Neuroradiology. In addition, he assumed the role of the Theranostic Lead at JDMI and is the Co-Director of the Silber Family Theranostic Centre at UHN.

Dr. Veit-Haibach is Full Professor for Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at the University of Toronto. His clinical research focuses on various aspects of Molecular Imaging and Theranostics. So far, he has published >250 peer reviewed articles, authored book chapters about Molecular Imaging in >10 books and served as editor on 4 books. He holds several competitive and well as industry supported grants for Theranostics and Molecular Imaging Research.

Dr. Paul Woods

Dr. Woods is a senior healthcare leader with a wide range of clinical and executive experience in both Canada and the United States, highly regarded for his proven ability to lead positive change in complex environments.

Prior to joining Southlake, Paul served as the President & CEO of London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC), one of Canada’s leading academic hospitals, where he led the organization to achieve Exemplary Standing with Accreditation Canada for the first time in 12 years. Under his leadership, LHSC opened Ontario’s first publicly owned ambulatory surgery centre, as well as an Office of Health Equity through a new Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Strategy.

While working state-side as Senior Vice President at the not-for-profit system Trinity Health in Michigan, Paul led strategies that improved quality of care as well as enhanced patient and provider experience. Through strong engagement with physicians, nurses and other clinicians, he implemented successful initiatives at Trinity to serve more patients and improve health outcomes while promoting sustainability. Paul has also held various other leadership roles in the health system including at Alberta Health Services, the University of Calgary’s Department of Family Medicine, and the Michigan Center for Clinical Systems Improvement. His insights have been sought through Board appointments, most recently as President of the Board of Directors for Trinity Health Coordinated Care, a four state Accountable Care Organization. He has also served as a Board member of Chicago Mercy Hospital, the first chartered hospital in Chicago which focuses on serving disadvantaged populations. Originally from Ontario, Paul obtained his medical degree from Western University after attending high school in Newmarket. He received his Master of Science degree from the Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at the world-renowned Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

A father of four adult children, Paul is married to Dr. Kristen Woods, a physician executive and business coach. He enjoys staying active with his two German Shepherds, cycling, playing hockey and golf.

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