What did you think would happen?
Of course we don’t have domestic manufacturing for COVID vaccines in Canada.
Globalization of manufacturing in most sectors has been around for a long, long time as companies sought efficiencies and trade agreements opened markets. Vaccine production is no different especially when you consider the cost for a reasonable sized vaccine manufacturing plant is one-half to one billion dollars.
Companies made choices — they looked at markets or countries that made the most sense including the available local expertise and business environment.
Let’s think about Canada.
What has it [government policies] done for the vaccine ecosystem?
Frankly almost everything it could to scare away manufacturers.
What’s that you say? No, can’t be true! Really? Remember vaccines are made by pharmaceutical companies…..
Oh. Well, yes, we don’t like pharma. They charge for healthcare. We don’t like their prices in Canada.
It’s more than prices. Canada has been simply uninterested in trying to keep this business here. In fact, policies over last two decades have been focused on making vaccines a low-cost commodity. We put vaccines out for tender to get the best deal from the lowest-cost producer in a foreign country.
Canadian jobs didn’t matter.
Canadian expertise didn’t matter.
Canadian research didn’t matter.
Just give me a discount! #idontpayretail
Well, we got the discount and now we will pay for the savings. We are not first in line, we are not second in line, we are not even in the top 10 it seems (so much for being part of the G7).
It’s true we still have some semblance of residual manufacturing of certain limited vaccines and some pharmaceutical products in Canada. The Don Quixote’s of the pharma industry haven’t given up yet. Bless them. No really, we should bless them.
We don’t have vaccine nor pharmaceutical security in Canada, however. We are vulnerable.
But it’s different now you say. You remind me that our government announced it was investing to build manufacturing at the National Research Council plant in Montréal. We’ll be fine you say. I read the announcement to say it is building out capacity produce 100,000 doses of vaccine per month at some point mid-2021. So, for 36.5 million Canadians this means 365 months or 30 years to produce enough doses for Canadians (assuming one dose per person — if you need a booster, this jumps to 60 years!). I guess we could put out a tender to some low-cost producer in a foreign country to make up the shortfall.
Everything we’ve done to save some dollars yesterday has us paying the price in lives tomorrow. Will it be worth it?
It’s amazing to think that we would think we would have had any different result. Did you really believe we would be first? That Trump won?
And you know what’s really scary?
We’re doing it again with new draconian regulations on new product pricing through the “PMPRB” to scare away new treatments especially for cancer and rare diseases. Go look that up and try getting a good night’s rest.
Pharma isn’t the bad guy here. Lack of vision is.
