During the Covid-19 pandemic, Justin Trudeau announced that a vaccine plant would be built in Montreal for Canadian-made Covid shots by the end of 2020. But critics say that after four years, not a single usable vaccine has been produced from this plant. The publicly owned Biologics Manufacturing Center (BMC) was built on the site of a former animal vaccine plant owned by the National Research Council. The federal government has allocated about $130 million in funding for this.
Although construction was completed in June 2021 and approved by Health Canada in compliance with regulations in July 2022, the Center was unable to produce a vaccine that would be useful to the public. Meanwhile, Novavax, the US firm expected to manufacture the shots at BMC, told the media that it was moving forward with efforts to find a Canadian-made vaccine despite the delay. Critics point to the fact that the BMC and NRC have told the media at various times that they would start production of the vaccine in 2021, 2022, and 2023, but none of this materialized.