Trudeau's promised made-in-Canada vaccine plant hasn't produced any shots

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a multi-million dollar funding commitment to build a vaccine plant in Montreal to churn out Canadian-made COVID-19 shots by the end of 2020.

Four years later, not a single vial of usable vaccine has rolled off the line.

The publicly owned Biologics Manufacturing Centre (BMC) was built quickly on National Research Council-owned land at the site of a former animal vaccines plant, thanks to a cash injection of nearly $130 million from the federal government.

While construction was mostly complete by June 2021 and certified by Health Canada as compliant with its regulations in July 2022, the taxpayer-funded facility hasn't yet done what it was intended to do — produce vials of vaccines at scale for patient use.

Meanwhile, the National Research Council (NRC) is still bankrolling the facility with $17 million in annual funding to help keep about 100 employees working on site, according to figures provided by the NRC, the federal government's research and development arm.

Novavax, the U.S. firm that's expected to manufacture its shots at the BMC, told CBC News it still intends to push ahead with Canadian-made COVID vaccines despite delays.

The firm, the BMC and the NRC have repeatedly blown past supposed start dates and have told the media at various points that production would start in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Some experts are wondering whether it's worth the effort, as COVID vaccine sales plummet worldwide and Pfizer and Moderna maintain their stranglehold on what's left of the market.

Another COVID vaccine maker, AstraZeneca, recently pulled its product, citing a global surplus of COVID vaccines.

Dr. Earl Brown is a professor emeritus at the University of Ottawa's school of medicine and an expert in virology and microbiology.

Brown said there is a "niche" market for Novavax's subunit vaccine, which uses a different technology than the mRNA products from Pfizer and Moderna.

Novavax has been able to sell some of its protein-based vaccine to patients who want an alternative to mRNA.

But Brown questions whether the mRNA-sceptic market is big enough to sustain a large operation like the BMC over the longer term.

As of February, only 37,343 Novavax shots had been administered in Canada, compared to more than 70 million Pfizer doses and about 33 million Moderna shots, according to Public Health Agency of Canada data.