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Canada sought billions from big tobacco. Not a penny has been collected
There are hints a lengthy court process over Canada’s tobacco companies may finally be coming to an end
OTTAWA — For more than two decades, big tobacco companies in Canada have been fighting lawsuits claiming they sold a highly addictive product that caused cancer while holding back information about the health risks.
Between 1998 and 2012, every Canadian province and territory filed suit looking to recover hundreds of billions of dollars in costs of providing health care to former smokers. Several other class-action lawsuits were also filed on behalf of Canadian smokers.
The tobacco companies have yet to payout a single cent in Canada from any of these suits.
In contrast to Canada’s long wait, tobacco companies settled similar suits with all U.S. states by 1998, the same year British Columbia moved forward with the first provincial lawsuit.
In 2015, after years of pre-trial appeals and a 251-day trial, one of the Canadian class-action lawsuits, known as the Blais and Letourneau case, won a historic judgment. The judge ruled against Canada’s largest tobacco companies — Imperial Tobacco, Rothmans, Benson & Hedges and JTI-MacDonald — finding them at fault and ordering the payment of $15 billion in damages to an estimated 100,000 Quebec smokers.
The tobacco companies appealed, but in 2019 they lost at the Quebec Court of Appeal.
Every Canadian suit against them was stopped after that appeal court ruling. That’s because the tobacco companies, who produce hundreds of millions in profits annually, have been in bankruptcy ever since.
