In the early days of the pandemic, the federal government announced a multi-million-dollar funding agreement with the National Research Council (NRC) to expand a vaccine facility in Montreal — a site Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said would pump out Canadian-made COVID-19 shots by November 2020.
Two years after the prime minister made that pledge, the NRC facility still hasn’t produced a single vial of a COVID-19 vaccine.
A spokesperson for the NRC, the federal entity dedicated to research and development, told CBC News its vaccine facility recently secured the necessary Health Canada approvals. But the NRC still offered no target date for when the biologics manufacturing centre (BMC) will be operational.
“The inspection by Health Canada took place in late July 2022 and the facility has been rated as compliant,” the NRC spokesperson said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, right, speaks with scientist Krishnaraj Tiwari during a visit to the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) Royalmount Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre facility in Montreal, Monday, Aug 31, 2020. The site was supposed to start pumping out COVID-19 vaccine doses by the end of 2021. (Graham Hughes/Canadian Press)
The spokesperson referred questions about vaccine production to Novavax, the Maryland-based company that was tapped by Ottawa to make COVID-19 shots at the facility.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Novavax said the company “continues to work with the NRC to complete the tech transfer of our COVID-19 vaccine” and it anticipates “integrating supply from this facility into our vaccine program” at an unspecified later date.
While announcing a $44-million investment for the NRC facility in April 2020, Trudeau said expanding this site and others would put Canada “at the forefront of scientific research” and give the country the “infrastructure to prepare vials for individual doses as soon as a vaccine becomes available.”
In August of that year, the government pumped an additional $126 million into the NRC’s Royalmount site, a federal investment that Trudeau said would “enable the preliminary production of 250,000 doses of vaccine per month starting in November 2020.”
In August 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the National Research Council (NRC)’S Royalmount facility would be producing shots by mid-2021. Two years after that promise, the site hasn’t produced a single vial of a COVID-19 vaccine. (Graham Hughes/Canadian Press)
But when November 2020 came, Trudeau conceded there wouldn’t be any shots rolling off the line as planned. The project’s initial timeline was derailed by construction delays and a failed deal with a Chinese vaccine maker.
In February 2021, as Canada was grappling with limited vaccine supply, Trudeau claimed that the NRC’s facility would finish construction sometime that summer — and that shots would soon follow.
“We expect the facility to be up and running by mid-2021,” Trudeau said.
In an interview with CBC News at the time, Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne compared building this sort of facility from the ground up on such a constrained timeline to the U.S. mission to put a man on the moon.
“This is like the Apollo project,” Champagne said. “Normally, it would take two to three years to do this, to get a production facility up and running.”
WATCH: Industry minister said production of COVID-19 vaccines would start in 2021
Minister says production of COVID-19 vaccines will begin in Canada later this year
2 years ago
Duration 2:42
Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne said he expected production of the doses to begin at the Montreal-based plant in 2021.
With Pfizer and Moderna facing insatiable demand for their products at this early stage of the immunization campaign, Trudeau’s announcement and Champagne’s optimism were welcome news for Canadians concerned about a dearth of shots.
Asked to comment Friday, Champagne’s office said he wasn’t available for an interview.
Trudeau also announced in February 2021 the government’s partnership with Novavax, a company that, before COVID-19, had never actually brought a vaccine to market.
This U.S. outfit, Trudeau said, would churn out tens of millions of its shots at the Montreal site. “This is a major step forward to get vaccines made in Canada, for Canadians,” he said.
WATCH: In 2021, Trudeau is questioned about Novavax COVID-19 vaccine deal
Trudeau questioned over Novavax COVID-19 vaccine deal
2 years ago
Duration 2:55
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is asked how starting production of the Novavax vaccine will affect his government’s vaccination goals.
Dr. Earl Brown is a professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa’s school of medicine and an expert in virology and microbiology. He said the government’s timeline for starting production was “completely unrealistic.”
“These things are just really complicated to build. There’s just so much regulation — it’s extreme. So I think it was crazily optimistic,” he said.
“You need two years, at a minimum, to build any new facility. I didn’t believe any of those numbers when I first heard them.”
Brown said another major vaccine production project in Canada — a $925-million expansion of French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi’s Toronto campus — has a five-year timeline, with production expected to start sometime in 2027.
An optimistic timeline
“The leading vaccine producer in the world gave themselves five years and they do this all the time,” Brown said, adding that the government should have anticipated that a relatively untested company like Novavax would need more time.
Once a world-leader in vaccine development and production, Canada’s manufacturing capability has been hollowed out after decades of cuts and mismanagement. The government has said little lately about the NRC facility it once touted as a solution to the country’s vaccine woes.
The NRC quietly announced in June 2021 that the site had finished construction on time — an impressive achievement that came just ten months after the first shovels hit the ground.
But in the world of biomanufacturing, construction is just one of many hurdles an entity must clear before it can start churning out sensitive products like a COVID-19 vaccine or another therapeutic.
Such a company must satisfy a series of industry and regulatory requirements before vaccines or biologics can be manufactured safely.
‘Were they too ambitious?’
Marc-André Gagnon, an associate professor at Carleton University and an expert on the pharmaceutical industry, said the government made its promise to build the NRC site during an “emergency situation” and the 2021 production start date was likely its best-case scenario.
“They had to be ambitious. The question is, were they too ambitious? Some voices say that they were. We didn’t know in 2020 when vaccines would be available but we probably knew that a facility like this wouldn’t be ready before the end of 2021, for sure,” he told CBC News.
Gagnon said that, despite the delays, Royalmount is a welcome addition to Canada’s manufacturing landscape. He said a developed country like Canada needs a publicly owned — and domestic — source of vaccines to avoid the mad scramble that defined the early COVID-19 vaccine procurement process.
“Canada used to be a hub for vaccine manufacturing. We were world-class. We need biomanufacturing capacity for the next thing, the next pandemic,” he said.
“And let me emphasize this — we need more public manufacturing capacity to discipline the private market a little bit and avoid predatory pricing.”
The NDP’s Don Davies says the Trudeau government has a “serious credibility issue” on vaccine production. (Ian Christie/CBC)
NDP MP Don Davies, the party’s health critic, agreed that some sort of public option for vaccine production is prudent but the government’s handling of the NRC facility has been “a major failure.”
He said it suggests Ottawa has a “serious credibility issue.”
“We are two years plus into this pandemic and we still aren’t producing a single dose of a vaccine in this country. It’s a policy fail, an accountability fail and a credibility fail,” he said in an interview with CBC News.
“The prime minister said publicly in August 2020 that we’d be producing vaccines at the Montreal facility. That was either highly irresponsible, or incompetent, or it was deceptive. I don’t know which of the three it is but Canadians know — we had a direct, clear promise from the prime minister about vaccines being produced here in Canada at a time when we were all on pins and needles.
“He was either misinformed or he was misleading. He has a duty to come clean with Canadians.”
Conservative MP Michael Barrett, the party’s health critic, was equally scathing in his assessment of the government’s vaccine track record.
In a statement, Barrett said the “Trudeau Liberals spent millions of dollars on their promises to produce vaccines domestically, and after two years they have missed every deadline with nothing to show for it.”
Almost seven years since news broke of an alleged conspiracy to fix the price of packaged bread across Canada, the saga isn’t over: the Competition Bureau continues to investigate the companies that may have been involved, and two class-action lawsuits continue to work their way through the courts.
Here’s a timeline of key events in the bread price-fixing case.
Oct. 31, 2017: The Competition Bureau says it’s investigating allegations of bread price-fixing and that it was granted search warrants in the case. Several grocers confirm they are co-operating in the probe.
Dec. 19, 2017: Loblaw and George Weston say they participated in an “industry-wide price-fixing arrangement” to raise the price of packaged bread. The companies say they have been co-operating in the Competition Bureau’s investigation since March 2015, when they self-reported to the bureau upon discovering anti-competitive behaviour, and are receiving immunity from prosecution. They announce they are offering $25 gift cards to customers amid the ongoing investigation into alleged bread price-fixing.
Jan. 31, 2018: In court documents, the Competition Bureau says at least $1.50 was added to the price of a loaf of bread between about 2001 and 2016.
Dec. 20, 2019: A class-action lawsuit in a Quebec court against multiple grocers and food companies is certified against a number of companies allegedly involved in bread price-fixing, including Loblaw, George Weston, Metro, Sobeys, Walmart Canada, Canada Bread and Giant Tiger (which have all denied involvement, except for Loblaw and George Weston, which later settled with the plaintiffs).
Dec. 31, 2021: A class-action lawsuit in an Ontario court covering all Canadian residents except those in Quebec who bought packaged bread from a company named in the suit is certified against roughly the same group of companies.
June 21, 2023: Bakery giant Canada Bread Co. is fined $50 million after pleading guilty to four counts of price-fixing under the Competition Act as part of the Competition Bureau’s ongoing investigation.
Oct. 25 2023: Canada Bread files a statement of defence in the Ontario class action denying participating in the alleged conspiracy and saying any anti-competitive behaviour it participated in was at the direction and to the benefit of its then-majority owner Maple Leaf Foods, which is not a defendant in the case (neither is its current owner Grupo Bimbo). Maple Leaf calls Canada Bread’s accusations “baseless.”
Dec. 20, 2023: Metro files new documents in the Ontario class action accusing Loblaw and its parent company George Weston of conspiring to implicate it in the alleged scheme, denying involvement. Sobeys has made a similar claim. The two companies deny the allegations.
July 25, 2024: Loblaw and George Weston say they agreed to pay a combined $500 million to settle both the Ontario and Quebec class-action lawsuits. Loblaw’s share of the settlement includes a $96-million credit for the gift cards it gave out years earlier.
Sept. 12, 2024: Canada Bread files new documents in Ontario court as part of the class action, claiming Maple Leaf used it as a “shield” to avoid liability in the alleged scheme. Maple Leaf was a majority shareholder of Canada Bread until 2014, and the company claims it’s liable for any price-fixing activity. Maple Leaf refutes the claims.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
Companies in this story: (TSX:L, TSX:MFI, TSX:MRU, TSX:EMP.A, TSX:WN)
TORONTO – Canada’s main stock index was up more than 250 points in late-morning trading, led by strength in the base metal and technology sectors, while U.S. stock markets also charged higher.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 254.62 points at 23,847.22.
In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 432.77 points at 41,935.87. The S&P 500 index was up 96.38 points at 5,714.64, while the Nasdaq composite was up 486.12 points at 18,059.42.
The Canadian dollar traded for 73.68 cents US compared with 73.58 cents US on Thursday.
The November crude oil contract was up 89 cents at US$70.77 per barrel and the October natural gas contract was down a penny at US2.27 per mmBTU.
The December gold contract was up US$9.40 at US$2,608.00 an ounce and the December copper contract was up four cents at US$4.33 a pound.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
MONTREAL – Quebec Premier François Legault says the Bloc Québécois must vote to topple the federal Liberal government next week and trigger an election.
Legault called on Parti Québécois Leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon to summon the “courage” to ask the Bloc to support the expected Conservative non-confidence motion against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority government on Tuesday.
The Bloc and PQ, which both campaign for Quebec independence, are ideologically aligned and have historically worked together.
But moments later Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet said on X that he would not vote to topple Trudeau, saying he serves Quebecers “according to my own judgment.”
Legault made the comments after expressing frustration with what he described as Ottawa’s inaction on curbing the number of temporary immigrants in Quebec, especially asylum seekers.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said he will put forward a motion of non-confidence in the government on Sept. 24, and specifically challenged NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh to back it.
The Conservatives don’t have enough votes to pass the motion with just one of the Bloc or the NDP.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
