Tobacco Lobby Groups in Canada and How to Spot Them

This page does not name organizations. Accusing a specific group of being industry-funded is a serious claim, and the standard we use here is that government bodies, courts or Parliament must have documented it. What we can document is the framework governments use to deal with the problem, and the questions anyone can ask of a campaign.

What the guidelines say

Canada is a Party to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Article 5.3 obliges Parties to protect public health policy from the commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry, and the guidelines adopted to implement it start from a blunt premise: “There is a fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the tobacco industry’s interests and public health policy interests.”

Recommendation 1.2 of the guidelines asks governments to “raise awareness about the tobacco industry’s practice of using individuals, front groups and affiliated organizations to act, openly or covertly, on their behalf.” That is the only definition we rely on. The guidelines also recommend limiting interactions with the industry and making the remaining ones transparent, rejecting partnerships, requiring that industry information be accurate, and not giving the industry preferential treatment.

What Canada does about it

Health Canada’s guidance for federal public servants turns those principles into practice. It tells officials to:

• avoid conflicts of interest, such as accepting industry funding, gifts or meals, or speaking at industry-funded events;
• avoid partnerships, including contracts, memoranda of understanding and industry-backed youth or public education programs;
• declare current, past or proposed industry ties, including those of close family members; and
• check whether consultation submissions come from organizations with industry connections.

Health Canada can still meet industry for consultations on new regulations and for briefings on compliance, but it publishes information on those meetings. The second legislative review states that the Government of Canada limits interactions to the extent necessary to regulate, and reports that some groups raised concerns about industry interference and called for proactive release of industry marketing information.

What courts have said

Court records show why governments are wary. The Court of Appeal of Quebec’s March 2019 judgment in two long-running class actions describes the plaintiffs’ claim that three manufacturers conspired for nearly five decades to hide or minimise the risks of smoking and to keep a scientific controversy alive. After amending the description of the class in one action, the court confirmed the Superior Court judgment in all other respects. The full case is summarised under tobacco litigation in Canada.

Five questions to ask about any campaign

These are our questions, not rules from the guidelines.

1. Who pays for the campaign, and is the funding disclosed on the group’s own site?
2. Does the group say what it wants regulated in the same terms the industry uses in its filings?
3. Has the group declared a connection when it submitted comments to a government consultation, as Health Canada’s guidance asks?
4. Is the group’s argument supported by a government, court or peer-reviewed source, or only by commissioned estimates?
5. Does the campaign concern a measure that affects industry sales, such as plain packaging or flavour bans?

The wider strategy of focusing public attention on the industry rather than its customers is described on our denormalization page.