A planned $88-million HIV vaccine manufacturing facility won't be built in Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada confirmed Friday. The Federal Government has officially cancelled the centerpiece project of that partnership, saying a manufacturing plant is no longer needed and Canadian researchers were not up to the job anyway.

$88 million were to be contributed by the Government towards building the facility. The project, which would offer manufacturing capacity for HIV vaccines used by researchers worldwide in clinical trials, was to be a joint venture between Canada and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

A notice on the Canadian HIV Vaccine Initiative website read, “After weighing all of the evidence, the Government of Canada and the Gates Foundation has decided not to proceed with the pilot-scale vaccine manufacturing facility”.

The agency said, “A study commissioned by the Gates Foundation concluded there is currently enough vaccine manufacturing capacity in North America and Europe to meet research needs”.

Winnipeg, though unofficially, had been the recommended site for the centre, said Terry Duguid, former CEO of the city's International Centre for Infectious Diseases.

Duguid said, “Our community has been cheated out of a major development that would have brought $500 million into our community over the next 20 years”.

60 to 70 people were expected to be employed in “high-tech jobs” in the supposed new centre.