Brockville, Ontario — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford have announced a deal to ensure Canada always has access to personal protective equipment during a pandemic.
The agreement means 3M will have to increase its capacity at its Brockville facility to allow it to produce up to 100 million medical-grade N95 masks a year. The federal and Ontario governments are each contributing $23.3 million to help increase production capacity at the facility.
The masks will be used to meet the private sector, provincial and North American market demand during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the future. Full production is slated to begin early next year, according to Prime Minister Trudeau.
Ontario has recently been concerned with the production of personal protective equipment in the country when the COVID-19 crisis caused a global competition for a limited supply of masks and other equipment. The N95 masks set to be made at the 3M facility were in particularly short supply.
Ford has said that he felt particularly frustrated at President Donald Trump’s attempts to limit the export of N95 masks from American plants, which includes 3M.
“We were at the mercy of other countries when it came to the PPE we desperately needed,” said Ford during Friday’s press conference. “We will never be put in this position again. I’m not going to rely on any country ever again.”
This is the second domestic contract to produce N95 masks–Medicom, a Quebec-based company that recently signed a 10-year agreement to supply N95 and surgical masks to the federal government.
Health Canada regulations require the approval of the masks and each shipment must be inspected by the Public Health Agency of Canada for quality control.
Canada currently has contracts for 154.5 million N95 and KN95 masks. However, as of Aug. 3, only 54 million N95 and KN95 respirators had been delivered. All masks were imported from outside the country.
KN95 masks are the Chinese equivalent of the N95 respirators that are certified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in the United States.
