Canadian companies contributed significantly to developing these vaccines too.

Vancouver-based Acuitas Therapeutics developed the lipid nanoparticle delivery mechanism for the Pfizer vaccine, for example. There are others as well. This article lists three Vancouver companies:

https://blog.jonasneubert.com/2021/01/10/exploring-the-suppl...

And that's not even mentioning Vancouver biotech unicorn AbCellera, which has developed an antibody treatment.

Your dates are a little off. The 70s had little to do with it - Canada’s privatization spree under Mulroney lined up with Reagan and Thatcher. So Connaught Labs was destroyed in the 80s by the Mulroney Conservatives. And NAFTA was ratified in the 90s by the Chretian Liberals, although it was Mulroney’s baby.

Yup you're totally right. I got mixed up with Connaught's sale to the Canada Development Corporation in 1972, and again confusing NAFTA's ratification with Mulroney's gov't.

Canadian pharmaceutical R&D and manufacturing is almost entirely gone at this point.

A big part of that was little interest in supporting the industry from the government.

Apparently a vaccine manufacturer approached the government a while back and got a tepid response so decided to invest elsewhere.

That's definitely true, but I've some hope we'll be getting some back with the new gov't labs being built, and the AI hubs in Montreal and Toronto pushing the pharmacogenetics story.