Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will join Ontario Premier Doug Ford today to announce a deal aimed at ensuring Canada is never again at the mercy of unreliable foreign suppliers of personal protective equipment during a pandemic.
Under the agreement, 3M is to increase capacity at its Brockville, Ont., facility so that it can produce up to 100 million medical-grade N95 masks a year.
The federal and Ontario governments are each kicking in $23.3 million to help increase production capacity at the plant.
A provincial government official confirmed the masks are to be used to meet private sector, provincial, and North American market demand throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.
Ford has repeatedly said that Ontario needs to ramp up production of personal protective equipment given the experience early in the COVID-19 crisis, when Canada was scrambling in a global competition for a limited supply of masks and other equipment.
The prized N95 masks, used by frontline health care workers, were in particularly short supply.