MPs on the House of Commons health committee are launching a study into the more than $300 million the federal government paid to Quebec-based Medicago, a defunct company whose COVID-19 vaccine never made it to market.
“Three hundred million dollars of taxpayer money was wasted and was hidden deep in a document,” Conservative MP Stephen Ellis told the committee Nov. 8.
“Canadian taxpayers can no longer stand for this. The sunny ways and transparency of this Liberal government have gone long and far and deep into some dark, dank cave.”
Mr. Ellis, who introduced the motion to study the matter, said Ottawa had lost $150 million to Medicago in the form of a “non-refundable” advance purchase agreement in 2020. The government then spent an additional $173 million on Medicago in 2022 for COVID-19 vaccine development and for the construction of the firm’s Quebec City manufacturing plant.
Mr. Ellis accused Liberal and NDP committee members of trying to limit the scope of the study into the vaccine contracts.
“These tactics that we now see of trying to cover up $150 million and also trying to limit the scope of the study, as to where the money went and how it was lost in such an incredible fashion, again, are intolerable,” he said.
Medicago, which had been developing a plant-based COVID-19 vaccine, announced in February it would be shutting down. Its vaccine was not accepted by the World Health Organization because the company had ties to tobacco companies.
Health Minister Calls Conservatives’ Criticism ‘Irresponsible’
The motion called for Minister of Health Mark Holland, Public Health Agency of Canada President Heather Jeffrey, Treasury Board President Anita Anand, officials from the health ministry, and “other witnesses deemed relevant by the committee” to testify.Conservative MP Rick Perkins told the committee he was “disappointed” that only four hours would be allocated to interview the witnesses instead of the six hours originally floated by the Conservatives.
Mr. Perkins also questioned whether Mitsubishi Chemical Group would get to keep the intellectual property and patents produced by Medicago. When Medicago was shut down, the company owned 100 percent of the firm.
“That’s the way it appears. Maybe that’s not the case,” he said. “Maybe the witnesses could actually shed some light onto these contracts.”
Mr. Holland, on Nov. 9, said the committee’s decision to study the contract was “irresponsible,” adding that Ottawa did the “responsible thing” by investing in several viable COVID vaccines at a time when they were needed.
“We didn’t know which winner it would be. Imagine the world the Conservatives are saying, where we should have picked one and guessed whether it would work out,” he told reporters. “Imagine if we didn’t make a bet on Moderna, or we didn’t make a bet on Pfizer or AstraZeneca. We wouldn’t have had vaccines for Canadians.”
The health minister accused Conservatives on the committee of wanting Cabinet to have “a connection with psychics so we can know the future” to know which vaccine companies were going to be viable. “We didn’t have that back then. It’s very easy now in the comfort of our position to look back at what worked out and what didn’t and say it was a waste of money to make those bets.”
