Dave Suchon and Farris Smith helped turn Ozempic into Canada’s bestselling medication. For their next act, they’re getting ready to produce the first made-in-Canada generic version of the drug – a move that marks an important step toward our country’s pharmaceutical sovereignty.
Suchon and Smith were working together as executives at the Canadian offices of Novo Nordisk when the Danish pharmaceutical giant launched Ozempic, the prescription diabetes medication that has since become a cultural and medical sensation for more than just treating diabetes.
After leaving Novo Nordisk, the duo launched Vimy Pharmaceuticals in 2024 with the goal of producing affordable Canadian-made medicines. On August 6, Vimy Pharma announced plans to go public through a proposed reverse takeover of TSX Venture-listed Harmony Acquisitions Corp.
“So much of what we use in terms of medicines [in Canada], be they generic or innovative, is made by foreign-owned companies and made outside of Canada,” says Suchon, the chief executive officer at Vimy Pharma. “Our inspiration was trying to change that. What better place to start than the highest-selling medication in the history of Canada?”
Ozempic has been the highest-earning prescription medicine in Canada for four years running, with sales of all semaglutide injection medicines in Canada totalling $3.5 billion in 2025, and a Leger Healthcare poll earlier this year showed that more than three million Canadians are on some form of the medication. Yet, many Canadians struggle to afford it. The brand-name version is listed at $228 per month, and many public drug plans and private insurers don’t cover it for weight loss.
Vimy’s first product to market will be a generic semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, prescribed for diabetes and weight loss, respectively. Generic drugs are typically 45 to 90 per cent cheaper than their brand-name counterparts, and Vimy’s semaglutide will be listed at $75.50 per month.
Health Canada is now conducting a formal review of Vimy Pharma's submission for generic semaglutide after the file cleared screening in early August, according to company representatives. The federal regulator has set a 180-day target for reviews.
The pair say they’re optimistic that their medication – which comes in a multi-use vial rather than the injectable pens often used for Ozempic and Wegovy – will be approved. “We feel very confident we’ve done all we can to de-risk the regulatory process,” says Suchon. “People tell me not to worry about it because we’ve clearly got a great product and it’s really good quality.”
Earlier this year, Canada became the first major market to approve generic forms of semaglutide, and the drug began arriving in pharmacies in spring with a list price of $78.14 per month (that’s before retail markups). So far, Health Canada has approved three generic versions of semaglutide; none are made in Canada. One is from Canadian-based Apotex Inc., which produces its product in India. The two other companies approved here to produce generic semaglutide manufacture through India-based Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd., which recently slowed production due to problems at a manufacturing facility.
Health Canada is also reviewing submissions for approval to produce semaglutide from five foreign-based companies, and one Canadian, at a time when pharmaceutical sovereignty has become a hot topic. Canada has faced significant shortages in medications, including chemotherapy drugs and injectable glucagon, a life-saving treatment for people with severe hypoglycemia. The House of Commons Standing Committee on Health is undertaking a study that looks at reducing foreign dependency for critical medicines, and Health Canada opened consultation on a priority review pathway for drugs manufactured in Canada, a policy that Suchon says feels “tailor-made” for what Vimy plans to do.
“We saw during the pandemic that things aren’t necessarily distributed evenly across the world when there are shortages,” he says. He points to a federal task force convened this year to advise on pharmaceutical trade policy: 18 out of 21 members work for subsidiaries of foreign-based multinationals headquartered outside of Canada. “Where is the Canadian-owned, Canadian-based multinational pharmaceutical company?” he wonders.
Winnipeg-born Suchon studied biochemistry at the University of Toronto – inspired by his father, who had suffered a life-changing spinal cord injury – before turning to law at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., which led him to working in pharmaceutical patent litigation and then joining Novo Nordisk in 2011 as part of the company’s legal team.
Smith was born and raised in North Carolina. After joining Novo Nordisk in 2003, he represented the company in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Greece, Brazil and France. In November 2015, he was interviewing for the role of Novo Nordisk’s Canadian chief financial officer when a colleague asked Suchon to take Smith to lunch and report back.
The pair met at an Italian restaurant near Toronto Pearson International Airport. “I immediately recognized how sharp Farris is,” says Suchon. “He’s able to jump in and tackle problems.”
Smith got the job. He and Suchon worked together to bring Ozempic to Canada in 2018, as the company increased its direct-to-consumer advertising and put the drug’s name behind home plate at Toronto Blue Jays games.
In 2021, Suchon’s group organized events celebrating the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin by the University of Toronto’s Frederick Banting and Charles Best as well as the University of Alberta’s James Collip. Novo Nordisk traces its roots back to that discovery: after hearing about insulin, Danish Nobel laureate August Krogh – whose wife, Marie, was a doctor living with diabetes – visited the Toronto researchers in 1922 and came home with permission to produce the life-saving medicine in Denmark. That licence – along with Novo Nordisk’s commercialization of a second U of T discovery, the GLP-1 gut hormone that led to semaglutide, nearly a century later – gave rise to a company now valued at around US$200 billion.
Suchon and Smith left Novo Nordisk in November 2023 and founded Vimy Pharma the following year. They named the company after the 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge, which became a defining moment in our country’s national identity.
“It’s that tremendous fighting spirit that we hope to bring to this endeavour, which we hope will form a cornerstone of the Canadian pharmaceutical industry for years to come,” says Suchon.
Vimy has paired with Edmonton-based Applied Pharmaceutical Innovation, a not-for-profit organization that supports life sciences commercialization, to produce a semaglutide product. API leads the Canadian Critical Drug Initiative, a $200-million project designed to boost the domestic supply of critical drugs. Semaglutide is listed as a critical medicine. Vimy will be the first company to make a product using API’s vial-filling line once its Health Canada submission clears review.
Most of Canada’s critical medicines are produced outside of the country, and the supply could be at risk at times of global insecurity, says Andrew MacIssac, CEO of API. “From our perspective, the more companies like Vimy that are able to manufacture here in Canada, the better,” he says.
Suchon and Smith predict the growth of Vimy Pharma will help narrow Canada’s pharmaceutical trade deficit. Between 2016 and 2025, the gap between what Canada imports and exports in drugs grew from a $5.5-billion deficit to a $14.6-billion one. “Being able to satisfy some of that domestic demand and couple that with export, we can make a big dent in this pharmaceutical trade deficit,” says Smith.
For now, it’s a waiting game, says Smith. They’ve done the regulatory work and clinical trials and are happy with the results. Suchon keeps a hard copy of the submission to Health Canada in his office; the roughly 5,000-page document is stored in a banker’s box, and he likes to leaf through it from time to time. “The science felt like the thing that was the most stressful, and I feel that’s largely behind us now,” he says. “We have seen the results.”
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