The 13.6 million expired AstraZeneca vaccines that Trudeau donated to foreign countries is estimated to have cost Canadian taxpayers over $100 million.
As per a report from the National Post, “According to a document tabled in the House of Commons last week, the government disposed of roughly 1.2 million doses of Moderna vaccines that expired either in mid-March or mid-April this year.”
“But that wastage is just a drop in the bucket compared to the nearly 13.6 million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines that the government donated to other countries last year and that sat in the manufacturer’s warehouses until they expired, according to new data provided to the National Post by Health Canada.”
According to the Financial Times, doses of AstraZeneca were priced at roughly $3 to $4 per dose when mass-produced, and governments secured orders of the COVID vaccine.
But this is inaccurate in the case of Canada. Trudeau managed to bungle the deal and secured 20 million doses at more than double that price.
“The only cost per dose revealed so far was released by accident when the price for the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine was accidentally left in an email included in a package of documents released to the health committee. That email said Canada would pay $8.18 per dose of AstraZeneca, which would amount to $163 million for the 20 million doses ordered,” the CBC reported in June 2021, just a month before Trudeau announced he’d be donating most AstraZeneca vaccines to foreign countries.
At $8.18 per dose of AstraZeneca, that means that the Trudeau government is estimated to have spent a whopping $111,248,000 on vaccines that were never needed or even wanted, as COVAX was flooded by other countries similarly pawning off their unwanted AstraZeneca vaccines after it was found to cause blood clots.
Moreover, the original agreement was to send even more AstraZeneca vaccines to COVAX that would expire — a total of 17.7 million doses.
And that’s just for AstraZeneca. Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines — for which Canada paid a premium — were even more expensive, and many of these are also either already expired or will expire soon.
However, even this is just the tip of the iceberg regarding how much Trudeau sent to COVAX.
In July 2021, the Trudeau government donated an additional $10 million to COVAX, which was on top of a $440 million in prior donations.
Overall, had the PM had better foresight or financial planning, hundreds of millions of dollars could have been saved throughout the pandemic.
