Liberals announce $200 million toward new vaccine plant in Mississauga

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Liberals announce $200 million toward new vaccine plant in Mississauga The money will cover roughly half of the cost of the expanded facility, which when complete will be able to make up to 640 million doses of vaccine a year Photo by Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press

Article content OTTAWA – The federal government is handing over $200 million to a pharmaceutical company for a major expansion of a Mississauga, Ont., plant, allowing the firm to make mRNA vaccines in Canada. The $199.16 million from the federal government’s Strategic Innovation Fund will go to Resilience Biotechnologies, a company formed just last year that bought the Mississauga facility from another firm last fall. The money will cover roughly half of the cost of the expanded facility, which when complete will be able to make between 112 million and 640 million doses of vaccine a year. The expansion will include fill and finish capabilities, the last step in vaccine manufacturing, which has been a bottleneck for many manufacturers. We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Liberals announce $200 million toward new vaccine plant in Mississauga Back to video mRNA vaccines, a new technology made in only a small handful of facilities around the world, are the underlying science behind vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer. Canada had very little vaccine manufacturing at the start of the pandemic.

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Article content Resilience is a contract manufacturer, making drugs for other companies, and the facility will be able to make several types of vaccines and drug therapies. Contract manufacturers were a major boost to Britain’s vaccine efforts, because they were able to expand the manufacturing of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which was a significant part of the U.K.’s roll out. Including the people it currently employs, the project is expected to help fund 500 permanent jobs. The company is required to repay about three quarters of the funding, but the government could not provide details of that repayment schedule before press time. Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said his department wants to ensure Canada has a robust industry for future possible pandemics and this is one of many investments the government is prepared to make.

Article content “We have the talent. We have the people, and we have the ecosystem to help grow this sector,” he said. “We all know that a strong and vibrant life sciences sector will not only mean preparedness for future pandemics, whenever it may come next, it will also create good jobs for Canadians.” More On This Topic Canadian-made COVID mRNA vaccine ready to test against Pfizer in new trial Made-in-Canada COVID vaccines are coming — but not until late 2021 Rahul Singhvi, the company’s CEO, said the company was formed with the idea of being ready for whatever the world might face from future diseases or pandemics. “We don’t know what the future enemies will be, but by having innovation, by having technologies that can be implemented at the last moment, we will be able to address it no matter what the future brings.”

Article content Singhvi expects the plant to be open by 2024 and said the work done to create groundbreaking vaccines is important, but it is equally important to have the technology to make them on a global scale. “In order for us to be better prepared, we have to invest more in not only the technologies that create new vaccines, but also the production technologies that are necessary to produce enough quantities of these vaccines.” Conservative Health critic Michelle Rempel Garner said the announcement today is coming much too late to help in this pandemic. “Today’s announcement will not help Canadians get a COVID-19 vaccine faster. It’s inexcusable that Canada is well over a year into the pandemic and Justin Trudeau is finally investing in the manufacturing of vaccines in Canada.”

Article content The government has previously funded new vaccine manufacturing facilities in Montreal and Saskatoon, as well an expansion of an existing facility in Toronto. But none of Canada’s COVID-19 vaccines are manufactured here, leaving the country’s supply chain susceptible to export restrictions and other trade measures from other companies. The U.S. required their vaccine manufacturing firms to supply their U.S. orders before they exported any vaccines overseas. Singhvi said the company’s agreement with the government doesn’t specifically require it to supply Canada first, but the plant would be able to swiftly meet Canadians needs. Champagne said the government will make sure in future that in a pandemic scenario anything produced on Canada’s shores will stay here. “We will make sure that whatever is produced in Canada that Canada would have primary access.” He said Tuesday’s announcement combined with previous manufacturing deals means Canada would have 20 times the vaccine it needed in a crisis. • Email: [email protected] | Twitter: ryantumilty

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