Tobacco victims hail bittersweet $32.5-billion deal

MONTREAL — After nearly three decades fighting Canada’s tobacco giants, Lise Blais is close to getting compensation for the lung cancer her late husband developed from smoking cigarettes.

Under a newly proposed deal, JTI-Macdonald Corp., Rothmans, Benson & Hedges, and Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd. would pay close to $25 billion to provinces and territories. More than $4 billion would go to tens of thousands of Quebec smokers and their loved ones, including Blais, who like other plaintiffs is eligible to receive up to $100,000.

The proposal is the result of a corporate restructuring process set off by a legal battle over the health effects of smoking.

“For sure we got discouraged but I’ve always said I’ll go to the end,” Blais, 81, said at a news conference in Montreal on Friday.

Blais and her son Martin Blais both said they feel “proud,” but they added that their fight was never about the money.

“It’s been a long process, 26 years … something like that. Obviously our loved ones won’t come back from the dead, but at least it gives us some kind of justice, some kind of closure, and the next step will be to wait for the agreement to take effect,” said Martin Blais, speaking of his father, Jean-Yves Blais, who died in August 2012 at the age of 68.

After a prolonged five-year process, a proposed plan of arrangement developed through mediation was filed in an Ontario court on Thursday. The three tobacco companies had sought creditor protection in Ontario in early 2019 after they lost an appeal in a landmark court battle in Quebec.

Within the $32.5-billion deal, provinces and territories would get a combined $24.8 billion; members of the class action would get $4.25 billion; Canadian victims from provinces outside Quebec would receive $2.5 billion; and the three tobacco companies would also pour more than $1 billion into a foundation to fight tobacco-related diseases — that amount includes $131 million taken from the money allocated to the Quebec plaintiffs.

“I feel relived but I wish my father was here …. It was his fight,” Martin Blais said. “I’m proud also that my mom took the fight and that she’s still involved.”

Dominique Claveau, executive director of anti-tobacco group Conseil québécois du tabac et de la santé, said, “For more than 50 years, Imperial Tobacco, Rothmans Benson & Hedges and JTI-Macdonald have lied, concealed the truth, systematically minimized and trivialized the dangers of tobacco.”

“After more than 25 years of legal proceedings, the tobacco companies will finally have to compensate the many victims of tobacco in Quebec and Canada.”

Bruce W. Johnston, one of the lawyers for the Quebec plaintiffs, has been with the case since the start. He said the proposal demonstrates that the Quebec justice system works.

“When we took this case in 1998, as far as we knew, there had never been a single person who had received a single penny in compensation from a tobacco company,” he said in an interview after the news conference. “Every single attempt had failed, and no one has ever achieved what we’ve achieved. There’ll be tens of thousands of people who will receive compensation.”

Johnston said there are potentially 100,000 people in Quebec who are eligible to receive up to $100,000, but so far he said the legal team has been in contact with just under 30,000 people. Smokers elsewhere in Canada who were diagnosed with lung cancer, throat cancer or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease between March 2015 and March 2019 would be eligible for up to $60,000 each.

Raymond F. Wagner, one of the lawyers who represents the Canadian victims outside Quebec, called the deal “historic,” adding that if it had not been for the Quebec legal team’s efforts, victims outside the province would not be entitled to compensation.

In a news release Friday, Rothmans, Benson & Hedges said there are still “important issues” to sort out with the plan but the proposal “represents an important step toward resolving long-standing tobacco-product litigation against it in Canada.” In a statement Thursday, Imperial Tobacco Canada said the proposal “resolves all Canadian tobacco litigation.”

The proposal must still go through several steps before it can be put into action, including a vote by creditors and approval by the court.

However, André Lespérance, one of the lawyers representing the victims, said the majority of creditors have already voiced their support, adding that he is not expecting further obstacles.

“The tobacco companies have a history of putting up roadblocks, but we’re really confident here that there won’t be any objections on their part that would prevent an Ontario Superior Court judge from approving the agreement,” Lespérance said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 18, 2024.

Joe Bongiorno, The Canadian Press