As expected, the federal government has signed a memorandum of understanding with Novavax to make COVID-19 vaccine at a facility in Montreal.
Reports of the agreement spread widely through the news media Tuesday morning.
Construction on the new facility should end this summer, and Trudeau said production should start soon after. However, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne told Marieke Walsh of the Globe and Mail that they don't expect Novavax vaccine to be produced in Montreal before the end of 2021, saying it’ll take several more months for the plant to get Health Canada’s approval.
This info is no longer correct, Minister Champagne said this afternoon production could start months after Canada’s vaccination campaign ends.
— Marieke Walsh (@MariekeWalsh) February 2, 2021
When it is up and running, Prime Minister Trudeau estimated that the plant will produce 2-million doses a month.
Trudeau also announced a separate agreement with Precision Nanosystems.
The University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Organization will eventually produce its vaccine against COVID-19. Trudeau said with a $46-million investment, it will eventually produce up to 40-million doses a year.
Add that to Canada's existing agreements with Pfizer and Moderna, and Trudeau told reporters, "we all hope that that is all we are going to need, but as we see new variants rising -- we don't know what the future looks like."
Canada has secured deals with multiple pharmaceutical companies, but efforts to ramp up production at a plant in Belgium have led to delays in shipments from Pfizer-BioNTech. There was no shipment to Canada last week, and this week's allotment was smaller than expected.
Moderna has also shipped fewer doses than expected.
As a result, opposition parties have been critical of the federal government's vaccine rollout.
Meanwhile, the European Union plans to restrict export of the vaccine.
On Monday, International Trade Minister Mary Ng told a Commons committee she had verbal assurances from European officials the restrictions will not impact shipments to Canada, but Tuesday, reporters pushed Trudeau why there is no agreement in writing.
"International affairs and agreements are based an awful lot on firm commitments made in conversations and shared publicly," he explained. "It's not like a small claims court where you can show a document. The conversations that I had with the President of the European Commission were enough to reassure me, and should be enough to reassure all Canadians."
Despite those setbacks, Trudeau continued to say all Canadians who want a vaccine, will be able to get one by the end of September.
So far, Canada has vaccinated about 2.4 per cent of its population.