When Is An Apology Not Really An Apology?

When it is delivered, not by the offending party, but rather by an unseen narrator instead.

A Clear And Present Danger?

Only for some, I'm happy to report.

A Possible Soution To Health Canada's Willful Impotence

Yesterday I wrote about the fact that Health Canada has 'convinced' (not ordered) Apotex to stop importing drugs from one of its suspect plants in Bangalore, India. The agency's (and Health Minister Rona Ambrose's) ongoing timid relationship with pharmaceuticals at the expense of our health and safety suggests stronger measures are needed

Writing in The Star, Amir Attaran thinks he might have a solution to this sorry state of affairs. The professor in the Faculty of Law and faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa asks,

should we reduce, or nearly abolish, Health Canada’s drug regulatory functions? Could we be safer by trusting in the decisions of larger, better-funded, foreign drug regulators instead of little lame Health Canada?

He looks to Europe for a model:

The 28 countries of the European Union, many of them quite small, long ago decided that it is expensive, inefficient and sometimes dangerously ineffective for each country to have its own drug regulator. Nowadays, most of them have delegated large parts of their drug regulatory functions to an EU-wide organization, the European Medicines Agency.

Attaran is not optimistic that Canada will likely follow suit with a similar co-operative venture:

Here, the Harper government’s asphyxiating control of government scientists and almost childish pride in Canadian sovereignty mean that Health Canada minimally co-operates with America’s FDA just next door. This is dumb: the FDA is more transparent, better resourced and scientifically better equipped than Health Canada will ever be.

He goes on to offer a picture of the FDA's ruthless effectiveness in interdicting suspect drugs:

Consider the case of Ranbaxy, a pharmaceutical company from India. Last year, the FDA successfully prosecuted Ranbaxy for manufacturing adulterated drugs and misleading it with false, fictitious and fraudulent drug testing data — crimes for which Ranbaxy paid $500 million (U.S.) in criminal and civil penalties.

Contrast that decisiveness with Health Canada's feckless dealings with the same company:

Even though former Ranbaxy executives say they are “confident there were problems” with drugs sold here, after the criminal conviction Health Canada refused to ban Ranbaxy’s factories, and instead negotiated with the company to voluntarily pull a few of its medicines off the market for testing; Health Canada won’t say which ones.

According to Attaran, the main reason for this gross disparity of response is not legal, but cultural,

namely the indolent, lapdog attitude of ministers like Ambrose and the public servants at Health Canada, who seem to lack any understanding of how governments should regulate.

Because they refuse to learn from the best practices of bodies like the FDA and the European Medicines Agency, he concludes that

we should in part abolish Health Canada and harmonize our drug regulation with those foreign agencies that are more competent than our own government.

While that might strike many as too drastic a solution, it is clear that major changes are needed if we are to be protected from corrupt and venal pharmaceutical companies that place their profits and their shareholders above the health and safety of Canadians.

Health Canada's Willful Impotence on Tainted Pharmaceuticals

As I have written previously, the scandal of tainted pharmaceuticals continues, and that which should provoke outrage and demands for accountability seems to elicit for the most part only shrugs and mild interest. And were it not for the Toronto Star's ongoing quest, most of us would be totally unaware of the threats to our health that are aided and abetted by Health Canada and Health Minister Rona Ambrose, thanks to a larger media, including the CBC, that have given the scandal absolutely no coverage.

Despite the investigative series conducted by the paper and an excoriating editorial, the only action thus far taken by Health Minister Rona Ambrose and her recalcitrant department has been to 'convince' (not order) Apotex to

stop distribution to Canadian retailers of what Health Minister Rona Ambrose described as “all products” manufactured at one of Apotex’s factories in Bangalore, India.

“The quarantine will allow the department time to verify that products from this facility meet Canadian safety and quality requirements,” Health Canada said in a short release.

I guess that is progress of sorts, since the last time Health Canada made such a request, Apotex refused. However, it is an anemic response given that when the issue first arose, the FDA banned the suspect drugs from entering the U.S.

However, even in Health Canada's putative victory with Apotex, there is less here than meets the eye, as is typical of the Harper regime:

Health Canada has not told the public what drugs are affected by this quarantine.

So even though many Canadians will have been taking these suspect and tainted drugs, they are not permitted to know which ones they are. Undoubtedly, as has been previously discussed, in the warped of Ambrose and her department, that information is considered commercially confidential.

In my next post, I'll discuss a possible way around the protective wall of silence erected by Health Canada to protect the pharmaceutical industry.

Offered For Your Consideration

While King Stephen has grown positively garrulous with the American media, there's one little detail he seems to have forgotten:



H/t Graeme Mackay

Another Pundit Supports Trudeau's Rejection Of Sun News

Reaction continues to be mixed on Justin Trudeau's decision to boycott Sun News following resident madman Ezra Levant's tirade against his entire family. Pollster Bruce Anderson is now the second pundit to support the decision, as he makes clear in his inaugural digital column for The Globe and Mail.

His has several reasons for taking this stance:

First off, if a competing politician uttered the things that Mr. Levant said about Justin Trudeau, we would expect an apology or a resignation, or both. If we wouldn’t tolerate such shameful behavior among political competitors, what would it say about how low we are willing to see media standards fall, if there were no consequences.

Second, maybe someone can explain why any of us should have to answer to anyone for the sexual habits of our parents. I’ve never heard a voter in a focus group say “I’d vote for candidate x, if his or her parents had been more sexually conservative.”

Anderson also points out, in addition to the distasteful content of the Levant screed, it is inaccurate:

Watch Mr. Levant’s description of events, and then read the account of how the bride’s father saw the same moments. I suppose it’s possible that the father of the bride was lying, but I think another explanation seems more likely.

Labelling the unhinged Levant's performance an embarrassment to journalists, and to those in conservative politics that he is normally aligned with, Anderson feels that Trudeau's response was a reasonable one, since he is simply

holding the publisher to account and using what leverage he can muster. His goal seems not to end or disrupt or manipulate media relations in a permanent or pervasive way, but to say this isn’t normal and it shouldn’t be treated as such.

In the instances of such scurrilous attacks one can either ignore the insults or speak out against them. In Anderson's view the latter is the more noble choice:

I fielded one call from a conservative who said that Mr. Trudeau was taking the coward’s way out by refusing to engage with Sun. I tried hard to understand that logic.

But in the end I couldn’t help but think that cowardice in that situation is doing nothing to defend your honour, and that of your parents.

I certainly get the need to protect professional journalism. But this week anyway, it needs more protection against what Ezra Levant would do to it, than what Justin Trudeau would.

It has been my observation that, like the bullies they are, extreme right-wingers are quite happy to mete out abuse, but cry like babies when held to account. Expect no agreement with Andersen's defense of Trudeau from that quarter.

Paul Calandra Apologizes

After his disgraceful behaviour the other day in the House during Question Period, Parliamentary Secretary and ardent Harper loyalist Paul Callandra issued a 'tearful' apology this morning. For me, his motives are suspect: