Opinion: Kinew's tobacco suit revelation — where there's smoke, there's fire?

In his keynote address, Kinew stunned the more than 1,000 delegates in attendance when he said Manitoba would be receiving somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 million over the next year from a lawsuit settlement against tobacco companies.

Kinew said the money, which he described as a first instalment on a total settlement that could reach several billion dollars, will be used to improve cancer treatment in the province and build a new CancerCare facility.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES

Premier Wab Kinew stunned delegates at the NDP annual general meeting this past weekend when he said Manitoba would be receiving almost $500 million from a lawsuit settlement against tobacco companies.

It was a stunning announcement, but is it true?

All 10 provinces are involved, in one way or another, in lawsuits against Imperial Tobacco Canada, Rothmans Benson & Hedges and JTI-Macdonald. However, the most recent news reports on the legal wrangling — some just a few weeks old — have consistently indicated a settlement was not imminent.

Kinew's statement, which strongly implied Manitoba had reached or was close to reaching a settlement, caught many of the close observers to the Canadian class-action process by surprise.

"We're a bit mystified," said Neil Collishaw, research director for Physicians for a Smoke Free Canada, an advocacy organization that has closely followed the legal negotiations between Big Tobacco and the provinces. "We don't know what to make of Wab Kinew's comments. Is he speculating that there might be a settlement in the future? Does he know that a settlement has been reached? It's not clear."

Collishaw noted there has been a veil of secrecy surrounding negotiations between the provinces and tobacco companies, so it's been very difficult to track any progress towards a settlement.

Joshua Knelman, Canadian journalist and author of Firebrand: A Tobacco Lawyer's Journey, said he was very surprised to hear Kinew describe an actual figure and an expectation the first payment could be made sometime within the next year.

"This is the first time that I've heard anything at the provincial level that a settlement is within reach," said Knelman, who has followed the class-action mediation for many years. "If they have reached some sort of agreement, I would have expected there would have been a group announcement."

A spokesman for the premier said Monday, based on his insider knowledge, Kinew's comments referred only to reasonable expectations from the class-action process.

If Kinew's comments are a glimpse behind the curtain of otherwise secretive negotiations, and perhaps a precursor to a final and more comprehensive settlement, it could be the beginning of the end of a story that has been decades in the making.

The first attempts in Canada to sue Big Tobacco go back to the late 1980s but the prospects of actually obtaining a meaningful settlement improved when two separate class-action suits were certified in Quebec in 2005.

In 2015, a Quebec Superior Court awarded plaintiffs in the class-action suits more than $15 billion, and the Quebec Court of Appeal upheld that decision in 2019.

The other nine provinces — including Manitoba — have filed their own lawsuits. Facing a combined liability of $500 billion or more, the three tobacco companies sought and obtained creditor protection in 2019 and began to negotiate with all provinces and territories on a settlement.

Citing progress in those talks, the tobacco companies have applied 12 times for an extension on their creditor protection while a settlement is worked out. The current extension runs through to September and while negotiations continue, none of the other lawsuits can proceed.

Opinion is divided on what should happen next.

Although the provinces are keen to recoup the costs of providing health care to smokers, health groups have pleaded with the provinces to include new restrictions on advertising and sales to continue reducing the consumption of tobacco products. These organizations, including the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Lung Association and the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, wrote last year to all elected members of provincial legislatures urging them not to focus solely on financial terms while negotiating.

There has also been concern expressed about allowing tobacco companies to pay off settlements over a lengthy period of time rather than in a single, lump sum.

Critics argue the parent companies of Canadian tobacco subsidiaries are more than able to pay the entire amount up front. They've also underlined the moral ambiguity of allowing tobacco companies to recruit new generations of smokers to generate the revenues needed to service the settlements to the provinces.

All of which brings us back to the question of whether Manitoba's premier put the settlement cart before the class-action horse.

Why would Kinew risk becoming the first premier to discuss details of a legal process that has been years in the making and shrouded in suffocating secrecy? It may take months, or even years to answer that question.

In the final analysis, leaking details of what will become the largest legal settlement in Canadian history may turn out to be rather imprudent. But it doesn't mean Manitoba's rookie premier will have been wrong.

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com

Dan Lett

Columnist

Born and raised in and around Toronto, Dan Lett came to Winnipeg in 1986, less than a year out of journalism school with a lifelong dream to be a newspaper reporter.

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