Premier Wab Kinew won’t say how much money Manitoba will receive as part of a proposed multibillion-dollar deal with Big Tobacco but he confirmed Friday the funds will go to fight and treat cancer.
“However this process plays out at the end of the day, when the provincial government receives resources, we are going to ensure that everything goes towards fighting cancer in this province,” the premier said Friday at an unrelated news conference.
Kinew said he could not divulge any monetary details until the legal process is complete.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS FILES
Premier Wab Kinew confirmed Friday the funds from a proposed multibillion-dollar deal with Big Tobacco will go to fight and treat cancer.
In 2012, Manitoba joined other provinces in a lawsuit against major tobacco companies — Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., Rothmans, Benson & Hedges Inc., and JTI-Macdonald Corp., as well as their foreign parent companies — to recover the costs of providing health care for tobacco-related illnesses.
After years of legal wrangling and delays to the proceedings, a proposed plan of arrangement developed through mediation was filed in an Ontario court Thursday. It includes nearly $25 billion for provincial and territorial governments as well as more than $4 billion for members of a Quebec class-action suit. It also includes more than $2.5 billion for smokers in other provinces and territories who were diagnosed with lung cancer, throat cancer or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease between March 2015 and March 2019.
At an NDP fundraiser May 4, Kinew told more than 1,000 attendees that “the first payments from these lawsuits are expected to be hundreds of millions of dollars — perhaps half a billion dollars.”
Manitoba would start to receive the money in the next year, and billions could be paid, the premier said at the time, promising that “every single dollar that comes to Manitoba as part of that settlement will be spent fighting cancer,” including the redevelopment and expansion of CancerCare Manitoba at Health Sciences Centre.
The premier said cancer is one of the “universal experiences” that touches everyone.
“Our team does view it as a sacred responsibility to work to ensure that more Manitobans can hear those four magic words ‘You are cancer free’,” Kinew told reporters.
The proposed settlement was criticized by some health officials.
“The settlement provides no road map aimed at preventing these very same companies from causing more damage by recruiting new victims, including through new enticing nicotine gadgets,” Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada said in a joint statement with Action on Smoking and Health and the Quebec coalition.
“Despite the tobacco industry having its back against the wall, the provinces choose to negotiate themselves a cash windfall without bothering to change the corporate behaviour at the core of the lawsuits.”
— with files from Maggie Macintosh and The Canadian Press
carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter
Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.
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