The American pharmaceutical giant Moderna confirmed Friday that it has chosen the greater Montreal area as the location for its new biomanufacturing plant — the company’s first outside of the United States.
The $180-million facility is expected to produce 100 million doses of mRNA vaccines per year.
“It’s important to have manufacturing in Canada,” said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at McGill University, standing alongside Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel and Quebec Premier François Legault.
“We are strengthening our own ability to respond to viruses.”
Details on its precise location are still pending. Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne, who was also present, said the company is still in the process of shopping around for potential sites.
Construction for the plant will begin sometime this year and is expected to be completed by 2024.
Legault said the plant will better prepare the province for future pandemics by reinforcing domestic supply chains and vaccine autonomy.
“We’ve had a hard two years,” he said. “We’ve had to look for masks, medical gowns, and then vaccines. We have learned we are better served by ourselves.”
Canada’s biomanufacturing industry has declined, Legault acknowledged, but what remains is centred in Quebec and the Greater Toronto Area, both of whom were in the running for the plant.
“Today I’m pleased to announce that Quebec has won the battle for the Moderna facility.”
The facility will also include a research centre that will work in collaboration with researchers from McGill University, who have signed a partnership with the company, and will have the capacity to produce mRNA vaccines against other respiratory viruses including the seasonal flu. Funding for that research is expected to come from Moderna.
“For the first time in the history of medicine, we have a molecule that is an information molecule and that changes everything. It’s like going from Blockbuster to Netflix — it’s a change of paradigm,” said Bancel.
The company has signed a 10-year partnership with the federal government to operate the facility, he said.
WATCH | Justin Trudeau announces new Moderna plant in Quebec:
Justin Trudeau announces new Moderna plant in Quebec
14 hours ago
Duration 1:09
The American pharmaceutical giant Moderna’s first plant outside of the U.S. will be located in the Montreal area. 1:09
“The government of Canada was one of our first global partners in the very early days of COVID,” Bancel added. “When I was raising money in 2020, we did not have the financial strength to get this industrial machine going, and Canada was one of the few countries here to help.”
Details of the agreement between Moderna and the Quebec and Canadian governments weren’t released. It’s still unclear how much public money will go toward financing the $180-million facility.
Moderna signed an agreement of understanding with the federal government last August to bring such a factory to Canada. A federal government news release on Friday said the parties were still working out the details of the deal.
Moderna leading vaccine inequality, critics say
The advocacy group the Council of Canadians has condemned the partnership, saying it will only deepen global vaccine inequality.
“We’re rolling out the red carpet for a company that has been an architect of a massively unequal distribution of vaccines doses around the world. So unequal that the World Health Organization has called it vaccine apartheid,” said Nikolas Barry Shaw, the trade and privatization campaigner with the council.
Champagne told reporters Friday the government hopes Canada will retain preferential treatment for the vaccines produced at the facility.
“If Moderna is gonna be manufacturing vaccines in Canada, Canadians will be first in line.”
Until COVID-19 vaccines are widely available in low-income countries, the virus and new variants will continue to spread, Barry Shaw said.
“We think we should be spending public money on building public manufacturing capacity and sharing the technology,” he said, adding countries at the World Trade Organization have been calling on giants like Moderna and Pfizer to lift the patents on vaccines.
WATCH | Moderna executive says local presence could mean smoother future vaccine rollouts:
Moderna rep says Canadian plant would put the country in a better position for future pandemics
10 hours ago
Duration 6:03
Moderna’s general manager in Canada Patricia Gauthier says having a manufacturing plant here would prevent delays in vaccine rollouts in the event of another pandemic. 6:03
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
