Sounds Like Corporate Extortion To Me

Given all of the revelations about how the Liberals legislated Deferred Prosecutions with SNC-Lavalin expressly in mind, it is perhaps no surprise that Big Pharma is now attempting to flex its muscles to prevent legislation that would benefit all Canadians. Andy Blatchford reports the following:

Brand-name drug companies could put off introducing new medicine in Canada and scale back research here if the country makes a major shift to cheaper generic alternatives under a national pharmacare plan, according to an internal federal analysis.

The concerns were included last year in a briefing document for federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau that explored the feasibility and costs of a pharmacare program.

For those who pay obeisance to corporate power, the document was sobering:

... the briefing note to Morneau said national pharmacare could influence the revenues of drug companies in several ways. Among the possibilities, it said a shift in favour of more generic drugs, mass-produced after patent protections for new medications expire, could lower costs.

But that could come with a cost for patients.

“For example, brand-name pharmaceutical companies may respond to a broad shift to generic drugs by delaying the introduction of new drugs in the Canadian market or by reducing the R&D activities that they undertake in the country,” said the analysis, labelled “secret,” which was obtained by The Canadian Press under access-to-information law.

To use the old cliché, Big Pharma is threatening to hold Canadians hostage should legislation beneficial to them emerge:

“Innovative Medicines Canada, which represents pharmaceutical patent holders, has warned that a national pharmacare program focused on cost containment may result in reduced access to medicines for Canadians.”

Such a threat, if followed through, would be part of larger pattern of pharma's failure on behalf of Canadians.

The briefing to Morneau said research and development investments by pharma companies in Canada already “significantly lag” spending in other countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group of 34 countries with advanced economies.

“Since 2003, industry investment in R&D has been less than 10 per cent of sales — the target that the pharmaceutical industry committed to in exchange for more favourable patent terms in Canada,” said the briefing to Morneau.

Like a predatory beast smelling blood, Big Pharma senses it has a Canadian government captured between its paws.

Time for us to show that we are not such easy pickings after all.

Corporate Extortion

Two noteworthy revelations in the SNC-Lavalin scandal have come to light. The first deals with impropriety, and the second with what can only be called corporate extortion.

First, The Star reports the following:

As former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould debated whether to intervene in the corruption prosecution of SNC-Lavalin, she received legal advice from her department that underscored what an unprecedented move that would be.

The legal advice prepared by the department set out her possible options on the SNC-Lavalin prosecution, including the ability to seek outside legal advice, but it stressed that no chief prosecutor has ever intervened in a specific case, and that any decision to intervene must be “hers alone.”

“Any decisions by the Attorney General of Canada are hers to make, independent of political considerations or processes, and in the public eye,” the document states.

Compounding the impropriety of the Trudeau government putting pressure on Wilson-Raybould to direct the Public Prosecutor to enter into a Deferred
Prosecution agreement with SNC-Lavlin is the revelation in documents obtained by The Canadian Press of the extortionate measures by the company to get what it wanted:

The documents... describe something called “Plan B” — what Montreal-based SNC might have to do if it can’t convince the government to grant a so-called remediation agreement to avoid criminal proceedings in a fraud and corruption case related to projects in Libya.

Under that plan, SNC would move its Montreal headquarters and corporate offices in Ontario and Quebec to the U.S. within a year, cutting its workforce to just 3,500 from 8,717, before eventually winding up its Canadian operations.

“The government of Canada needs to weigh the public interest impact of the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin,“ the presentation reads.

The company’s board and senior management were prepared to quickly bundle parts of the business that had no role in the Libya case into a new entity, putting the “trio of possibly convicted entities” into another organization that would operate “on a reduced business level in Canada or heading into eventual wind-up,” they read.

The details appear to contradict public statements by chief executive officer Neil Bruce, who has denied both that the company threatened to move its headquarters, and that the company cited its some 9,000 Canadian jobs as a reason the construction giant should be granted a remediation agreement.

The company walked back the comments days later in a statement, saying a remediation deal was the best path to protect its Canadian workforce.

A recent news report, which I am not currently able to find online, cited the commitment that SNC-Lavalin made to stay in Quebec after receiving a huge loan/grant from the Quebec government, so clearly, this threat was a thuggish bluff. As well, as I outlined in a recent post, there is plenty of current work federally for the company, even if it is barred for 10 years from bidding on federal contracts, and nothing in a conviction would prevent it from getting provincial contracts, of which it also currently has many.

Trudeau enthusiasts will continue to see his pressure on Raybould-Wilson as a noble expression of economic nationalism. More critical thinkers may draw the conclusion that the Liberal government was simply being cowed by the thuggish tactics of a corporate extortion artist.