Canada and Ontario are investing $470 million to ensure that the nation is self-sufficient in vaccines

The Canadian and Ontario governments are investing $470 million in a French vaccine company to ensure that we don’t have to rely on far-flung overseas suppliers for vaccines in the event of a global pandemic.

Sanofi Pasteur will build a new influenza manufacturing plant on the former Connaught Laboratories site in North York between now and 2026.

The new plant will be able to generate enough “vaccine doses to serve the entire Canadian population within approximately six months of the World Health Organization (WHO) detecting a pandemic influenza strain,” according to officials.

“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,” said Federal Infrastructure Minister François-Philippe Champagne.

“Whenever that will be, we will be prepared as a nation.”

Sanofi Pasteur’s Connaught campus was a state-owned research and production center for polio, diphtheria, and smallpox vaccines.

In 1989, Brian Mulroney, the Progressive Conservative Prime Minister, approved the selling of Connaught laboratories to a French pharmaceutical corporation.

At the time it was sold, it was the world’s largest producer of influenza vaccines.

“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 would spend more than $455 million in Canada, resulting in the creation of 165 new jobs and the retention of 1,100 others.

In addition, the organization would spend at least $79 million a year in Canadian research and development.

The formulation, fill-and-finish, and inspection of flu vaccines and “booster” vaccine doses for seniors will all be done at this new facility.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ontario Premier Doug Ford said the recent development showed coordination between his administration and the Trudeau government, adding “everyone is doing a fantastic job keeping the vaccines going forward.”

He has publicly chastised government efforts at least twice in the last week, once labeling the federal procurement campaign as “a joke.”

Since the first of three COVID-19 vaccines was approved for emergency use in Canada in December 2020, Canada has had to rely on pharmaceutical companies with locations in Europe and India to obtain supplies.

Due to legal battles over vaccine shipments, Canada has fallen behind the rest of the Western world in COVID-19 vaccine introduction, with shipments slowing to almost nil in January and February.

The National Research Council and American pharmaceutical company Novavax partnered on an earlier initiative to develop a COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing plant in Canada, but it won’t be ready until late 2021 at the earliest.