‘They settled for pennies on the dollar’: Advocates let down by tobacco settlement

As provincial and territorial governments announced their share of court-approved compensation from the tobacco industry earlier this month, some anti-tobacco advocates said the governments didn’t get what they were fighting for.

“They settled for pennies on the dollar,” said Garfield Mahood in an interview with Nunatsiaq News.

Mahood is a long-time activist who in 2007 was made an officer of the Order of Canada for his anti-tobacco advocacy.

The Ontario Superior Court approved a $32.5-billion settlement in a ruling released March 6.

It’s part of a decades-long legal battle the provinces and territories launched in 1998 against Canada’s three largest tobacco distributors: Imperial Tobacco Ltd.; Rothmans, Benson & Hedges; and JTI-Macdonald Corp.

The settled sum is 15 times lower than the original $500 billion in tobacco-related health-care costs the governments were seeking, Mahood said, adding the real total harm caused by tobacco is much larger.

“It’s an embarrassment,” he said. “You can hardly describe that as a win.”

As part of the settlement, Nunavut will receive $97 million to help strengthen health-care services, support research into smoking-related diseases, and hold tobacco companies accountable for their past actions, the Nunavut government said March 7 in a news release.

As well, individual Nunavummiut, like the rest of Canadians, will be able to apply for compensation for the harm they suffered from smoking.

To be eligible, a claimant must have smoked at least 87,600 cigarettes sold by the involved Canadian tobacco companies between Jan. 1, 1950, and Nov. 20, 1998, and must have been alive on March 8, 2019. For someone who smoked for that entire period, it averages about five cigarettes a day.

They must have also been diagnosed in Canada with emphysema, lung cancer or throat cancer between March 8, 2015, and March 8, 2019.

Emphysema patients can receive up to $18,000, and lung or throat cancer patients are eligible for up to $60,000, Rob Cunningham, a senior policy analyst at the Canadian Cancer Society, said in a phone interview.

The society took part in the litigations.

“We wanted there to be more public health measures to reduce tobacco use in the settlement, and in the end those measures are very inadequate,” Cunningham said.

He added public health measures are especially needed in places like Nunavut, with the highest smoking rates.

In 2018, 70 per cent of Nunavummiut age 16 and older smoked tobacco, with some communities reaching 84 per cent.

By comparison, that year the average smoking rate across the provinces was 16 per cent for people age 12 and older, according to the Canadian Community Health Survey.

Smoking causes an increased risk for cancers and leukemia and kills more than 46,000 people each year, according to the Cancer Society.