Anti-tobacco activist issues early warning about class-action payout scams to come

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This article was published 03/03/2025 (543 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As Manitobans await their share of a multibillion-dollar settlement with three global tobacco companies, they are being cautioned to be aware of potential scams.

“We really want Manitobans not to be subject to potentially fraudulent businesses or outreach saying, ‘You need to pay to be part of this,’” said Cynthia Carr of the Manitoba Tobacco Reduction Alliance.

“You don’t.”

A final court hearing was held Monday in Ontario for the Canadian Tobacco Proceedings, a series of lawsuits and settlements targeting the companies for smoking-caused medical problems caused by their products.

The $32.5-billion proposed final settlement will be distributed to provinces, territories, individual smokers and a foundation.

Anyone diagnosed with lung cancer, throat cancer or emphysema/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease between March 8, 2015, and March 8, 2019 may be eligible to file a claim under the Tobacco Settlement Canada 2025.

Canadians who started smoking before Jan. 1, 1976 may receive up to $18,000 for emphysema/COPD and up to $60,000 for lung or throat cancer. Those who started after 1976 may receive up to $14,400 for emphysema/COPD and up to $48,000 for lung or throat cancer.

Carr, said the settlement hasn’t yet been approved by a judge but already fraudsters have set up websites trying to scam potential claimants in other provinces. While it’s too soon for anyone to register a claim, an official Tobacco Claims Canada website (wfp.to/tobacco) allows people to see if they’re eligible to make a claim and sign up for information updates.

“You can go there for factual information,” said Carr, a Winnipeg epidemiologist.

The Manitoba government is expected to receive more than $1.1 billion from the settlement over the next 20 years, Canadian Cancer Society lawyer and senior policy analyst Rob Cunningham said in Ottawa.

In 2012, Manitoba joined other provinces in a lawsuit against “big tobacco” — Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., Rothmans, Benson & Hedges Inc., and JTI-Macdonald Corp., as well as their foreign parent companies — to recover the costs of providing health care for tobacco-related illnesses.

After years of legal wrangling and delays to the proceedings, a proposed plan of arrangement developed through mediation was filed in an Ontario court last year. It includes nearly $25 billion for provincial and territorial governments as well as more than $4 billion for members of a Quebec class-action suit. It also includes more than $2.5 billion for smokers in other provinces and territories who were diagnosed with lung cancer, throat cancer or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease between March 2015 and March 2019. Another $1 billion was set aside to establish the Cy-près Foundation to fund research, programs, and initiatives focused on improving outcomes in tobacco-related diseases.

Manitoba’s settlement of $1.119 billion includes $281 million up front minus legal fees, with the rest paid out from tobacco company profits over the next 20 years, Cunningham said, explaining the size of the payouts, which are broken up into five-year increments, depend on the companies’ after-tax profits.

The province needs to dedicate some of its settlement money towards education, and preventing a new generation of nicotine addicts from getting hooked on vaping and nicotine pouches, said Carr.

“When youth are asked, for example, why they vape, many will say it helps reduce my stress and anxiety when, in fact, the impact of that nicotine coming through the vape is shown more and more to be potentially harmful to brain development,” she said.

Carr pointed to a Canadian Medical Association Journal report that said vaping often delivers higher nicotine concentrations than conventional cigarettes.

Youth are most likely to choose the highest nicotine level of vape liquid — which is heated by devices producing vapour that is inhaled, mimicking the sensation and visual gratification of smoking — that equates to smoking one to two packs of 20 cigarettes, it said.

“Part of it is that you don’t realize how much nicotine they’re actually getting from the vape,” Carr said.

Premier Wab Kinew said earlier that the province will use its settlement money to fight and treat cancer.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca