Pearl Eliadis on a Generational Tobacco Ban in Canada | CBC Listen
April 28, 2026 |聽Pearl Eliadis聽joined CBC's Radio Noon Quebec to discuss whether Canada should follow the United Kingdom in banning tobacco sales to anyone born after 2008. Eliadis frames the question as a Canadian Charter analysis: a generational ban would clearly restrict liberty, but the legal test under section 1 is whether that restriction is a "reasonable limit ... demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." Given the pressures on Canada's healthcare system and an aging population, she argues such a law could pass that test, asking, "Do we want to be preventative and work upstream?" The novel question for courts, she notes, is whether a rolling prohibition goes farther than necessary, an issue Canadian law has not yet had to address.
