On Thursday July 3 2025, Elizabeth May, MP for Saanich–Gulf Islands and Leader of the Green Party of Canada, sent a letter to British Columbia’s Minister of Health, the Hon. Josie Osborne, urging the provincial government to fund 9-year-old Charleigh Pollock’s Brineura medication to treat her rare disease.
Read the pdf of the letter here
The Honourable Josie Osborne
Minister of Health
Province of British Columbia
July 3, 2025
Re: A Plea for Universal Pharmacare and Urgent Access to Brineura for Charleigh Pollock
Dear Minister,
As you will be meeting tomorrow with the family of Charleigh Pollock, the little girl tragically afflicted with CLN2 disease, I am writing to express my support for the family’s request that the province continue funding Charleigh’s access to Brineura.
That said, I see Charleigh’s case in a larger context. I hope that you, along with our new Federal Health Minister, the Honourable Marjorie Michel (copied here), may be able to collaborate to address the desperate need for full, universal, single payer pharmacare.
Canada remains the only country with universal public healthcare without all prescription drugs covered within the health care system. Numerous studies, including the report led by Ontario’s former Health Minister Eric Hoskins and the seminal, multi-university pharmacare study in 2020, have shown that comprehensive pharmacare would save lives and avoid billions of dollars in costs driven by the high price of prescription drugs in Canada. Coverage becomes even more imperative for medications such as Brineura with smaller demand as the disease, in this case CLN2, is so rare.
Big Pharma has no guardrails. It can charge whatever it wants for treatment and medication access. It can make obscene profits and exploit urgent, heartbreaking cases like Charleigh’s to build public pressure and compel governments to pay up. The irony is not lost on me: I am now assisting the industry in getting what it wants precisely because Charleigh’s need is so urgent.
Let’s be clear and public about how we are pawns helping Big Pharma to rip us all off. But we do not have to be. We can negotiate price and bulk purchasing from a position of strength with one federal drug formula and negotiated price.
This letter is both a plea to help this little girl, Charleigh, immediately, and a call to tackle the larger issue head-on. We must act now to ensure our healthcare system is not bankrupted by Big Pharma’s unchecked greed.
Thank you for your concern and attention to this urgent need.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth May, O.C.
Member of Parliament
Saanich–Gulf Islands
Leader of the Green Party of Canada