Consumer Protection and Products Liability Law

By Anita Anand

Globe and Mail September 25, 2018

The Ontario Securities Commission recently published a proposed rule banning certain commissions to dealers on mutual fund sales. The rule was not just Ontario’s initiative – it was a joint effort by members of the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA), which consists of regulators from all provinces and territories. After months of discussions, which included the consideration of empirical data, the CSA finally agreed on the need to restrict certain commissions, with each of its members agreeing to implement the rule in its home province or territory.

Then, to the surprise of many, Ontario Minister of Finance Vic Fedeli expressed the government’s disagreement with the rule, ignoring the statutory process for making laws relating to the capital markets in this province. The Minister’s approach presents three problems. First, it undermines the rule-making process that is embodied in statute and has been the law for more than 20 years. Second, it fails to appreciate the important investor protection concerns that the CSA identified and sought to address. Third, it creates uncertainty in the capital markets, which the government of the day should be loath to do.

Reports abound of an apparent innovation crisis in the pharmaceutical sector, with some sources citing escalating drug development costs, declining new drug approvals, and an increasingly stringent regulatory environment. Concurrently, commentators refer to the death, or at least the decline, of the blockbuster model of drug development—where large, brand-name pharmaceutical companies rely on a portfolio of drugs that gross more than U.S. $1 billion per year—which has dominated the pharmaceutical sector for decades.

Decreasing the Data Deficit: Improving Canada’s Drug Regulatory System: Paper by Trudo Lemmens & Shannon Gibson now publicly available on SSRN.

Recent media reports rightly point to Canada’s abysmal record when it comes to transparency of pharmaceutical data; this notwithstanding numerous calls and recommendations for urgent action, including in a 2012 Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology Report. A recent announcement by Health Canada that it was publishing a ‘summary report’ of data about the controversial acne pill Diane-35 (6 months after it announced it would do so) does little to reassure that we are really catching up with other countries.