The Canadian and Ontario governments are giving $470 million to a French vaccine maker to ensure we aren’t stuck depending on distant foreign suppliers for vaccines whenever the next global pandemic arises.
Between now and 2026, Sanofi Pasteur will build a new influenza manufacturing plant on the site of the former Connaught Laboratories in North York.
Officials said that when completed, the new plant will be able to produce enough “vaccine doses to support the entire Canadian population within approximately six months of the World Health Organization (WHO) identifying a pandemic influenza strain.”
“When it comes to the next pandemic flu, we should be self-sufficient, if there is one lesson learned from the current COVID pandemic, we need to have a strong Canadian biomedicine sector,” Federal Infrastructure Minister François-Philippe Champagne said.
“Whenever that will be, we will be prepared as a nation.”
The Connaught campus of Sanofi Pasteur was a state-owned research and manufacturing facility for vaccines against polio, diphtheria and smallpox.
Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney approved the sale of Connaught laboratories to a French pharmaceutical firm in 1989.
It was the largest manufacturer of influenza vaccines in the entire world at the time it was sold.
“We’re giving a new life to the Connaught laboratories this morning,” Champagne said.
The federal government will invest $415 million in the partnership with Sanofi Pasteur Ltd.
Ontario's government will contribute $55 million to the project.
Sanofi will invest more than $455 million as well as create 165 new jobs in Canada and maintain another 1,100 others.
The company will also invest at least $79 million a year to fund Canadian research and development.
This new facility will ensure drug product formulation, fill-and-finish and inspection of flu vaccines and “booster” vaccine doses for seniors.
Ontario Premier said the new development demonstrated cooperation between his administration and the Trudeau government, saying “everyone is doing a great job getting the vaccines moving forward,” in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
He pointedly criticized federal efforts publicly at least twice in the past week, once calling the federal procurement effort “a joke.”
Since the first of three COVID-19 vaccines was approved for emergency use in Canada in Dec. 2020, Canada has been reliant on pharmaceutical manufacturers with sites in Europe and India in order to secure supplies.
Battles between different jurisdictions over vaccine shipments have been Canada fall behind much of the western world in COVID-19 vaccine deployment, with shipments in January and February sometimes slowing to almost zero.
An earlier effort to build a COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing plant in Canada, with the National Research Council and American pharmaceutical firm Novavax, will not be ready until late in 2021 at the earliest.
-- With files from the Canadian Press
