It's all around, yes, and having been an elected person and dealing with the first very strict conflict-of-interest law in British Columbia, which arose because of obvious corruption, I got used to it. When I came back to the university, I realized that my former colleagues aren't used to the idea of declaring conflicts.
Here's a recent issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. With the permission of the committee, I'd happily pass it around. It is partly in French. I brought this along to read on the airplane. The lead article is about the increasing crazy prevalence of diabetes among indigenous people, but I realized that on the cover it says “Happy Januversary”, which is an advertisement for brand name Januvia, or sitagliptin, a drug promoted for the treatment of diabetes.
I'm going to be not overly specific, but someone in a very prominent position of power over me in my university has been sending out surveys about the coverage of this drug in British Columbia on Merck stationery. Is that appropriate for a doctor who is in a prominent position in a university? His predecessor with the university years ago sent out similar surveys on Merck stationery for cholesterol-lowering drugs.
This is a description of.... It's not a bad person. This is an excellent physician, but I'm saying it's an example of how pervasive the failure to recognize conflict is, and the only solution around that is really absolute independence and government, whether it be federal, provincial or territorial, insisting that we can't allow that, any more than you would allow it in Parliament here.