QUESTION PERIOD — Innovation, Science and Economic Development
Biologics Manufacturing Centre
December 11, 2024
My question is for the Government Representative in the Senate, Senator Gold. According to a Montreal Gazette opinion piece by doctors Adam Houston and Jason Nickerson in November, the Biologics Manufacturing Centre, or BMC, in Montreal — a facility completed in 2021 at the cost of $126 million — remains underutilized despite ongoing global health crises and urgent need for critical medicines.
Given the significant investment already made in this facility, how does the government justify its failure to put the BMC to use to address pressing needs such as vaccines and treatments for diseases like Ebola especially during humanitarian crises like the one in Gaza? Why is Canada allowing this facility to remain idle while lives are at stake, Senator Gold?
Thank you for your question. Senator, it’s important to note that from the very outset, the intent was always for the Biologics Manufacturing Centre to be self-contained on the one hand and governed through a public-private partnership. The National Research Council and the Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine, as founding members, jointly set up a new legal, independent, not-for-profit corporation, Biologics Manufacturing Centre, to govern and operate the facility in December 2022. On April 1, 2023, the Biologics Manufacturing Centre officially assumed responsibility for the operations of the centre to which you referred.
The Biologics Manufacturing Centre is an important part of Canada’s biomanufacturing infrastructure. It’s a key element of the Government of Canada’s biomanufacturing and life sciences strategy.
Thank you, Senator Gold, but it’s producing very little. As highlighted in a CBC article and by The Associated Press, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, has announced that it is halting aid deliveries to Gaza due to the threat of armed gangs looting aid convoys. This decision comes in the face of an intensifying humanitarian crisis with hundreds of thousands of people living in dire conditions.
Senator Gold, what steps are the government taking to protect aid workers? How much aid is actually getting to the ground?
As you know, senator, the situation in Gaza is volatile and unpredictable following the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel — which breached the ceasefire — conducted by Hamas, which Canada has unequivocally condemned. There are hundreds and hundreds of trucks filled with aid inside Gaza that cannot be delivered because of the threats of violence from the criminal gangs that are still in control in Gaza.
