Hi everyone, Mark Iype in Edmonton today.
Snow fell this week in Alberta as temperatures crept lower and everyone steeled themselves for the winter ahead. But the colder weather also means cold and flu (and COVID) season has arrived.
However, this fall, it looks as though parents won’t be scrambling to find children’s Tylenol and Advil in pharmacies like last year, when an unprecedented shortage left people desperate to find relief for their sick kids.
In response, and in one of her first acts as the newly appointed Alberta premier, Danielle Smith stepped up and decided the province would take matters into its own hands to try to solve the problem. On Dec. 6, 2022, she and then Health Minister Jason Copping announced they were seeking approval from Health Canada to import five million bottles of acetaminophen and ibuprofen from a Turkish supplier at a cost of around $80-million.
While there may have been some skepticism around the deal, there was definitely a sigh of relief from many parents who had children suffering through a variety of respiratory illnesses.
Unfortunately, the skepticism may have been warranted.
This week, The Globe’s Alanna Smith reported that the province paid nearly $75-million up front and only received about 1.5 million of the promised five million units of children’s medicine. And not only does it appear little of what was received was ever actually used, the province may never get the remaining medicine already paid for.
According to Alberta Health Services, an initial shipment of 250,000 bottles of acetaminophen authorized by Health Canada for hospital use arrived last January. But AHS spokesperson Kerry Williamson said this week that only 9,000 of those units were ever distributed to hospital pharmacies before AHS, in July, ordered its staff to stop using the weaker-strength product because the domestic supply had stabilized.
As for parents looking to find help at their local pharmacy, the Atabay Pharmaceuticals medicine authorized for retail was only shipped after the respiratory crisis had subsided. Five shipments, totalling 1.25 million units of acetaminophen and ibuprofen, arrived between March and May.
Health Canada says the countrywide shortage ended in April.
And what of the rest of the Turkish medicine already paid for by the province? Health Canada says now it would not consider applications from Alberta to bring in the remaining 3.5 million bottles of foreign medication unless a critical shortage recurs, something one supply chain expert says is unlikely.
Gerry Harrington, senior vice-president of consumer health with Food, Health & Consumer Products of Canada, an industry group, said a perfect storm of elevated illness and intermittent supply problems was the culprit for bare pharmacy shelves.
“There was a period of two weeks where demand was four times normal and that completely emptied out the supply chain,” he said. The supply has since rebounded and production remains elevated, Harrington said, adding that there are “no signs” that Canada will face another collapse of stock any time soon.
“Can it happen again? Sure. I mean, it’s possible. But I think the likelihood of those two things coming at us again seems pretty remote.”
For its part, the Alberta government stands by its decision to step up when it did, even if taxpayers paid for medicine that may never arrive.
“Although distribution took longer than hoped, we needed to act quickly to ease the burden on kids and families,” Smith said in a statement. “We stand by the decision made last fall to act and obtain much-needed supply to support families and feel confident that if we find ourselves in a shortage again, Alberta will be prepared.”
The ibuprofen already shipped expires in November, 2025, and the acetaminophen in January, 2026.
This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.