Quebec: Health Minister Tony Clement has said that Canada is ready to tackle any worldwide pandemic outbreak as a Quebec City-based influenza vaccine production facility is near completion.

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK), owns the facility, which is in the final stages of the nearly $200-million expansion.

Clement said that in past few years the fast efforts to get ready for an outbreak have been made.  

Highlighting that there have been some cases of human to human transmission of avian flu, Clement said “Our planning has accelerated over the last few years with the advent of the H5N1 virus.”

Canadian efforts are part of a “worldwide pyramid of planning” led by the WHO (World Health Organizations) with the international health regulations followed by countries working with each other on strategies.

Quebec Health Minister Philippe Couillard said the federal and provincial government must be attentive. He remarked that pandemics don’t respect borders.  

He said, “We have to be ready together as a country to face this possible threat. We have done that in Quebec in our areas of jurisdiction but always with full collaboration with the Public Health Agency of Canada and our colleagues at the federal level and in other provinces.”

“I would say if you compare Canada to other countries in the world we are ahead of many other countries in the preparedness but how can a government know if it's going to be ready or not? You can never be ready enough. We hope that the pandemic will never be among us, we hope that we have taken measures to reduce fatalities and disease-spread in our population,” he said.

GlaxoSmithKline plant’s expansion takes production capacity at the facility to 75 million doses. Now, the company is also using some of its increased capacity to incline its sales into the lucrative U.S. market.