I thank the Standing Committee for the opportunity to submit this brief for their consideration.
My son, Corporal Scott Smith, 3-Commando, Canadian Airborne Regiment, died of self-inflicted wounds on Christmas Day, 1994, during military operations in Rwanda, following a severe adverse reaction to the antimalarial drug mefloquine.
My son was first issued mefloquine two years earlier, during his deployment to Somalia in 1992, when he was made an unwitting participant in a fraudulent study of what was then, in Canada, an experimental and unlicensed medication.
To gain access to large supplies of mefloquine, under the guise of a drug safety monitoring study promoted by the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Department of National Defence misled officials at Health Canada that it intended to carefully monitor soldiers for medication side effects.