Members of the Commons health committee are calling for the first-ever rule requiring all witnesses to disclose potential conflicts of interest before testifying, in response to longstanding concerns over pharmaceutical lobbying on Parliament Hill.“We’re a health committee, and there should be a requirement that any conflict of interest be declared beforehand,” said Liberal MP Dr. Marcus Powlowski (Thunder Bay–Rainy River, Ont.). “This has become the standard in medicine,” he added, urging colleagues to adopt the proposal whether or not Conservatives supported it.Blacklock's Reporter said Conservative MP Dr. Matt Strauss (Kitchener South–Hespeler, Ont.) backed the idea but questioned how it would be enforced. “Is it all going to be on the honour system?” he asked. “Is there going to be some more detail about that?” Still, Strauss said the concept “makes a great deal of sense.”The committee deferred a vote on the motion, though several members voiced strong support.Liberal MP Dr. Doug Eyolfson (Winnipeg West) said he had previously seen witnesses fail to disclose financial ties that could have affected their testimony. “There would have been a very different context had those conflicts been declared,” he said.The proposal follows years of concern about drug industry influence in federal policymaking. During debate on the 2014 passage of Bill C-17, which gave cabinet power to ban harmful prescription drugs, then-Conservative MP Terence Young (Oakville, Ont.) accused pharmaceutical lobbyists of pressuring lawmakers behind closed doors.“Drug industry representatives who infest Parliament Hill love to talk about when doctors make errors or patients take too much of a drug,” Young said at the time. “What they never talk about is when a drug used the right way kills or injures a patient.”Young, whose daughter Vanessa died at age 15 after taking a Johnson & Johnson drug prescribed for a digestive issue, named the law in her honour. He described the pharmaceutical industry as profit-driven and unaccountable. “They have power and influence,” said Young. “They are some of the wealthiest companies in the world and they have no loyalty to any country.” He noted no executive had faced criminal penalties for preventable drug-related deaths.Young said insiders in the drug and medical community knew that some medications posed dangers even when used as directed. “The drug business had become all about Wall Street,” he told the Commons.
