Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says if he were to be elected prime minister he would launch a $44-billion lawsuit against pharmaceutical companies to account for what he calls their role in the opioid epidemic.
He said Tuesday that a Poilievre government would join, as a plaintiff, an existing class-action lawsuit filed by British Columbia, seeking an additional $4 billion in damages to the federal health-care system, and launch “a separate federal lawsuit to go after non-health costs, like border security, prisons, Indigenous programming, etc.”
“A total of roughly $44-45 billion is that what big pharma owes federal taxpayers and we're going to put that money towards recovery and treatment,” Poilievre said.
B.C. filed its class action lawsuit in 2018 on behalf of Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial governments to recover costs that “resulted from wrongful conduct of opioid manufacturers, distributors, and their consultants,” according to the province.
It named Purdue Canada—part of the American pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma, best known for making the drug OxyContin—as one of more than 40 manufacturers and distributors in its class-action lawsuit.
In June 2022, B.C. settled with Purdue Canada for $150 million, and the provincial government plans to “aggressively pursue litigation against the remaining defendants until they have all been held accountable.”
Poilievre told reporters Tuesday that if elected he would not only sign on to the B.C. class action, but also launch one at the federal level.
“The people who profited from this misery should be the ones to pay the bill,” he said, standing before dozens of people from Last Door, a Vancouver drug and alcohol treatment centre.
“These powerful multinationals knew exactly what they were doing, but they kept doing it anyway to profit themselves and their wealthy executives,” he also said.
The Conservative leader cited the number of opioid-related deaths and hospitalizations in Canada, saying the “NDP-Liberal approach has failed” to solve the problem, and blamed the current government for an increase in the number of drugs and drug additions in Canada.
He also repeated a message from a previous trip to B.C. last November, saying in a video at the time that under the Trudeau Liberals, “everything feels broken,” and that supervised consumption sites need to be defunded because they lead to “massive” increases in overdoses and crimes.
Mental Health and Addictions Minister Carolyn Bennett said at the time Poilievre’s comments were "irresponsible" and "misguided," labelling them “just irresponsible populist nonsense.”
“The evidence is clear on this. Safe supply saves lives. We cannot afford to return to damaging, unscientific ideology at the expense of people’s lives,” she also tweeted in November.
Whereas at the time Poilievre said the funds for supervised consumption sites should be spent on border enforcement and taking a tougher stance on repeat offenders who are “preying on addicts,” on Tuesday, he said the funds for those sites should be redirected to recovery and treatment programs.
