Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - December 23, 2020, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE B7 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2020 ? WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM B 7BUSINESS Give the Gift of Knowledge! GIVE a 12-month digital subscription to our website and apps for just $60, RECEIVE a free month's subscription for yourself! You will also receive our "A Strong Manitoba Needs a Strong Free Press" tote bag! (while quantities last) VISIT: winnipegfreepress.com/gift-of-knowledge Special offer available only to current subscribers: Eligibility details: Gift of knowledge offer only available to current subscribers. Recipient offer only available to new subscribers (recipients must not have been a subscriber in the past 60 days). TORONTO - Gains in the technology sector helped lift Canada's main stock index to a positive close as U.S. mar- kets were mixed and the Canadian dol- lar lost ground against the American greenback on Tuesday. North American markets returned to a more typical low-volume Christ- mas week activity level after Monday's "overblown" reaction to news of a new strain of the coronavirus in the United Kingdom, said Craig Jerusalim, senior portfolio manager at CIBC Asset Man- agement. Investors appeared to take some com- fort from suggestions that while the new strain may be more readily trans- mitted, it may not be more deadly and vaccines may still be effective, he said. The S&P/TSX composite index closed up 51.57 points at 17,552.46 after falling 33.74 points on Monday. "(What's) probably affecting Can- ada the most is the U.S. dollar - the trade-weighted U.S. dollar reversed its trend and it's up today. That's going to be negatively impacting all sorts of materials, which does impact the TSX," said Jerusalim. "As the U.S. dollar had been weak- ening, the Canadian dollar had been strengthening. The last couple of days' reversal on the U.S. dollar is really that flight to safety, the unbridled fears of different strains of the virus and the tighter lockdown in the U.K." The Canadian dollar traded for 77.47 cents US compared with 77.83 cents US on Monday. Stocks drifted in mixed trading on Wall Street after Congress finally ap- proved a US$900-billion rescue pack- age to carry the economy through the winter. After months of bickering, Congress approved a deal on Monday night to send US$600 cash payments to most Americans, give US$300 per week to laid-off workers and deliver other aid to businesses struggling under the weight of the pandemic. In New York, the Dow Jones indus- trial average was down 200.94 points at 30,015.51. The S&P 500 index was down 7.66 points at 3,687.26, while the Nasdaq composite was up 65.40 points at 12,807.92. A report that Apple is targeting 2024 to produce a passenger vehicle that could include its own breakthrough bat- tery technology prompted more losses for electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc. on its second day of trading on the S&P 500, but helped bump up the shares of a Canadian company. Magna International Inc. rose 4.7 per cent to $85.67 on speculation it could be a potential assembly partner to Apple, said Jerusalim. In Toronto, software companies propelled the information technology sector to a 4.22 per cent rise, with Lightspeed POS Inc. riding a posi- tive stock rating upgrade to close at $86.65, an $8.93 or 11.5 per cent in- crease. Shopify Inc. jumped 7.27 per cent to $1,649.23 and Constellation Software rose 4.63 per cent to $1,773.76. Energy was off by 1.7 per cent, led by Enerplus Corp., down 5.3 per cent, and Vermilion Energy Inc., down 4.5 per cent. - The Canadian Press Tech sector boosts TSX as Lightspeed climbs, U.S. markets mixed W ASHINGTON - The U.S. Jus-tice Department sued Walmart on Tuesday, accusing it of fuel- ling the nation's opioid crisis by pres- suring its pharmacies to fill even pot- entially suspicious prescriptions for the powerful painkillers. The civil complaint filed points to the role Walmart's pharmacies may have played in the crisis by filling opi- oid prescriptions and Walmart's own responsibility for the allegedly illegal distribution of controlled substances to the pharmacies at the height of the opi- oid crisis. Walmart operates more than 5,000 pharmacies in its stores around the country. The Justice Department alleges Walmart violated federal law by sell- ing thousands of prescriptions for controlled substances that its pharma- cists "knew were invalid," said Jeffrey Clark, the acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Depart- ment's civil division. Federal law required Walmart to spot suspicious orders for controlled sub- stances and report those to the Drug Enforcement Administration, but pros- ecutors charge the company didn't do that. "Walmart knew that its distribution centres were using an inadequate sys- tem for detecting and reporting suspi- cious orders," said Jason Dunn, the U.S. attorney in Colorado. "For years, Wal- mart reported virtually no suspicious orders at all. In other words, Walmart's pharmacies ordered opioids in a way that went essentially unmonitored and unregulated." The 160-page suit alleges Walmart made it difficult for its pharmacists to follow the rules, putting "enormous pressure" on them to fill a high volume of prescriptions as fast as possible, while at the same time denying them the authority to categorically refuse to fill prescriptions issued by prescribers the pharmacists knew were continually issuing invalid prescriptions. The suit highlighted alleged problems in Walmart's compliance department, which oversaw the dispensing nation- wide of controlled substance prescrip- tions. In particular, even after Walmart pharmacists informed the compliance unit about "pill-mill" prescribers whose practices raised egregious red flags, Walmart allegedly continued to fill in- valid prescriptions issued by those pre- scribers, according to the suit. The suit said only later did Walmart allow phar- macists to do blanket refusals for these suspect practices. Walmart fought back in an emailed statement to The Associated Press, saying the Justice Department's inves- tigation is "tainted by historical ethics violations." It said the "lawsuit invents a legal theory that unlawfully forces pharmacists to come between patients and their doctors, and is riddled with factual inaccuracies and cherry-picked documents taken out of context." Walmart noted it always empowered its pharmacists to refuse to fill prob- lematic opioids prescriptions, and said they refused to fill hundreds of thou- sands of such prescriptions. Walmart also noted it sent the Drug Enforce- ment Administration tens of thousands of investigative leads, and it blocked thousands of questionable doctors from having their opioid prescriptions filled at its pharmacies. In a corporate blog post published late Tuesday, Walmart argued many health regulators, medical groups, doc- tors and patients criticize the company for going too far in refusing to fill opioid prescriptions. Some even say Walmart is improperly interfering in the doctor- patient relationship, the company said. AP reported the news of the lawsuit ahead of the Justice Department's public announcement, citing a person who could not discuss the matter publicly before the announced move. The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity. Walmart filed its own pre-emptive suit against the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr and the Drug Enforcement Administration nearly two months ago. In its lawsuit, Walmart said the Jus- tice Department's investigation - launched in 2016 - had identified hun- dreds of doctors who wrote problematic prescriptions that Walmart's pharma- cists should not have filled. But the lawsuit charged that nearly 70 per cent of the doctors still have active registra- tions with the DEA. "Blaming pharmacists for not second-guessing the very doctors the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) approved to prescribe opioids is a transparent attempt to shift blame from DEA's well-documented failures in keeping bad doctors from prescrib- ing opioids in the first place," the com- pany said in its statement. Walmart's lawsuit alleged the gov- ernment was blaming it for the lack of regulatory and enforcement policies to stem the crisis. The company is asking a federal judge to declare that the gov- ernment's suit has no basis to seek civil damages. That suit remains ongoing. The initial investigation was the sub- ject of a ProPublica story published in March. ProPublica reported that Joe Brown, then U.S. attorney for the East- ern District of Texas office, spent years pursuing a criminal case against Wal- mart for its opioid prescription prac- tices, only to have it stymied after the retail giant's lawyers appealed to senior officials in the Justice Department. Two months later, Brown resigned. He didn't give a reason for his depar- ture except to say he would be "pur- suing opportunities in the private and public sectors." Brown went into pri- vate practice in the Dallas area. - The Associated Press Walmart sued over alleged role in opioid crisis MICHAEL BALSAMO AND ANNE D'INNOCENZIO GERRY BROOME / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES The suit high- lighted alleged problems in Walmart's compli- ance department, which oversaw the dispensing nationwide of con- trolled substance prescriptions. B_07_Dec-23-20_FP_01.indd B7 2020-12-22 9:24 PM ;