Liberals announce first made in Canada Moderna mRNA vaccines

The Liberal government announced Moderna has begun production of the first mRNA vaccines in Canada.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The Liberal government announced Moderna has begun production of the first mRNA vaccines in Canada. The news comes as Conservatives criticized the feds for mishandling a program meant to compensate Canadians injured by mRNA COVID shots.

The Liberal Industry minister Melanie Joly, and health minister Marjorie Michel announced Moderna had produced mRNA vaccines for the first time in Canada during a press conference in Laval, Quebec on Friday.

“Canada is ready. We're ready to produce here at home. We're ready to protect our people, and we're ready to lead on the global stage,” Joly said in Laval, Friday. “And while some countries turn their backs to science, Canada will invest in and believe in science, because science saves lives.”

Since 2020, the government has spent over $9 billion procuring COVID mRNA shots from major pharmaceutical companies, including Moderna, according to a government report. Between 2021 and 2024, the Liberals purchased 149 million doses from Moderna.

The plan to build an mRNA production facility was announced in August 2021. At the time, the government had already spent $1.2 billion "rebuilding" Canada's biomanufacturing capacity since the start of the COVID lockdown era.

According to the news release about the recent “milestone” for Moderna in Canada, the Liberal government has spent over $2.5 billion in Canadian tax dollars on domestic biomanufacturing and the life sciences sector, including vaccines and therapeutics, since March 2020, according to a news release about the announcement.

“One of the amazing features of this technology, mRNA and of this facility in Canada, is that we can make any infectious disease vaccine,” Stéphane Bancel, the CEO of Moderna said during the press conference. “If tomorrow, God forbid, or next week, or in five years, or in three years, but it might happen one day again. There's a new pandemic. We'll be able, very quickly…change what we make here.”

This news comes after Conservative MPs grilled the Liberal government for its “failures” running the Vaccine Injury Support Program, and the alleged misallocation of funds from OXARO the company who ran the program.

The company reportedly took nearly 70% of $50 million allocated to the program. OXARO told True North it only allocated 55 per cent for administrative fees and 30 per cent to vaccine-injured recipients.