Opinion: Health Canada ghosts the science on smoking cessation aids
February 05, 2026 by financialpost.com
Opinion: Health Canada ghosts the science on smoking cessation aids
Bureaucracy’s primary instinct is self-preservation. Across government, non-profit, and private sectors, bureaucratic institutions work to present themselves as essential, celebrate their own past achievements, and deflect blame for failures onto those lower in the hierarchy. A recent example is a 15-page publication by federal health officials titled Delivering Results: Advancing Canada’s Tobacco Strategy, which reads largely as self-promotion. The document highlights standard talking points such as respect for Indigenous peoples and the distribution of large amounts of public funding to other agencies. It also congratulates itself for declining smoking rates and portrays Ottawa’s health bureaucracy as heroically improving Canadians’ lives.
