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The University of St Michael's College at the University of Toronto has been
severely criticised for having accepted a $C150000 (£64000; $101000;
93000) grant from Imperial Tobacco in
2001. The grant was to help fund the college's corporate social
responsibility programme in its continuing education
department.
Atul Kapur, president of Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, issued a statement saying: "We fail to understand why a university would agree to partner with `big tobacco.' We have no alternative but to ask the university to make a choice between embracing the interests of public health or legitimising an industry whose behaviour has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Canadians."
Students at the university were also up in arms. Rocco Kusi-Achampong, president of the Student Administrative Council, said that at a board meeting members unanimously voted to send a letter to University of Toronto officials deploring the grant and asking that the money be returned.
Richard Alway, the president of St Michael's College, said that the donation was made with no strings attached, that no special recognition was given to the tobacco company for the donation, and that the company had no impact on the programme's design, content, or presentation.
However, when the issue was raised by Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada and the Non-Smokers' Rights Association at a press conference that the two groups organised last November, Alway took the matter to the college's board of governors and recommended that the board authorise a review of existing University of Toronto policy, under which the grant had been accepted.
That policy says simply that donations may be accepted from any legitimate, taxpaying company doing business in Canada. Alway asked whether the policy was adequate or whether it should include more restrictive conditions. A review committee was set up late last year and will report, possibly, by June.
"There are 20 other universities that accepted tobacco money in 2001 in Canada," Alway says. "I think the questions raised are legitimate, and we're trying to deal with them."
Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada and the Non-Smokers' Rights Association
paid for a four page advertisement (below) in the University of
Toronto students' newspaper, the Varsity, urging all
universities to break ties with tobacco companies. 
© 2003 BMJ
Publishing Group Ltd
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© 2003 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd
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