Faced today with the staggering impact of the opioid addictions crisis, Ontario’s Liberal government is urging the federal government to take legal action against a company that allegedly played a role in triggering the epidemic.

But a decade ago, knowledge of lawsuits, criminal charges against executives and the increasing abuse of OxyContin wasn’t enough to dissuade the province from awarding that same company a $4.9-million taxpayer-funded grant.

According to documents obtained by the Toronto Sun in a lengthy battle at Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commission, the Liberal government doled out the money in 2007 to the manufacturer of OxyContin — Purdue Pharma. The documents reveal it did so even though it was well aware of legal issues piling up against the company because of the addictive pills which some experts say are at the root of the country’s wave of opioid addiction.

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