Trudeau’s promised made-in-Canada vaccine plant hasn’t produced any shots – CBC

Four years after the plant was first pitched, not a single vial of vaccine has rolled off the line

May 24, 2024

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a multi-million dollar funding commitment to build a vaccine plant in Montreal to churn out Canadian-made COVID-19 shots by the end of 2020.

Four years later, not a single vial of usable vaccine has rolled off the line.

The publicly owned Biologics Manufacturing Centre (BMC) was built quickly on National Research Council-owned land at the site of a former animal vaccines plant, thanks to a cash injection of nearly $130 million from the federal government.

While construction was mostly complete by June 2021 and certified by Health Canada as compliant with its regulations in July 2022, the taxpayer-funded facility hasn’t yet done what it was intended to do — produce vials of vaccines at scale for patient use.

Meanwhile, the National Research Council (NRC) is still bankrolling the facility with $17 million in annual funding to help keep about 100 employees working on site, according to figures provided by the NRC, the federal government’s research and development arm.

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-made-in-canada-covid-vaccine-novavax-1.7211462