The pro-ad campaign

CanWest Global has brought a court action claiming that regulations on prescription drug advertising are contrary to its Charter right to freedom of speech:

The court action, launched by the company's MediaWorks division, comes amid a lobbying effort by Canada's broadcasting, newspaper and magazine industries, which have been trying for several years to have the rules changed...

The regulations date back several decades and were put in place to prevent drug companies from fear-mongering or from making false claims about the effects of a particular medication...

However, critics of drug advertisements say the laws must be kept in place to ensure consumers aren't exposed to overly aggressive advertising campaigns. A report prepared for the Health Council of Canada by a researcher at the University of British Colombia (sic) recommended last month that the government not only preserve the rules, but strengthen them.

Providing detailed information on drugs should not be left up to commercials, the report said. Rather it should be a publicly funded service.

CanWest chief executive officer Leonard Asper told the company's annual meeting in Toronto last month that several regulatory changes are needed in Canada's media sector to ensure companies can be profitable.

Off the cuff, it seems highly unlikely that the case itself will go far. While there's an apparent surface limit on freedom of expression, there's almost certainly a sound basis for the policy under s. 1. And the case should be all the weaker since the law isn't being directly challenged by the drug companies who might want to advertise and thus engage in the suggested expression.

Instead, the challenge comes from a media conglomerate whose sole purpose is to charge the greatest amount of money possible for the privilege of allowing advertisers to express themselves. And it's worth noting that based on the article, a good chunk of the national media (with CanWest merely taking the lead in the litigation) seems to consider itself entitled to be a compensated conduit for whatever information big pharma wants to spread - whether or not that could lead to harmful effects for Canadian citizens.

Unfortunately, even if the court case fails, it sounds like CanWest may have a sympathetic ear in the Con government. Harper himself may be ready to reward the media for the campaign gone by, and we should all know that Harper himself has argued that unlimited advertising is a Charter right. Which means that any hope of stopping the lobbying effort may require that Canadians make clear that the U.S.' lax standards aren't an example that we want to follow.