Terence Hart Young (born July 24, 1952) is a politician in Ontario, Canada. He was a Conservative member of the House of Commons of Canada from 2008 to 2015 who represented the riding of Oakville. Previously, Young was a Progressive Conservative member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario between 1995 and 1999.
Background
Young was born in Toronto, Ontario. His father was an Anglican minister at St. Anne's Anglican Church in Toronto's west end. Young's mother Judith is a member of the Massey family. His great uncle Denton Massey represented the riding of Greenwood in Toronto in parliament from 1935 until 1949, and is related to Raymond Massey.
He received his B.A. in Political and Social Science from York University in 1975 and attended Osgoode Hall Law School for one year, before pursuing a business career. He worked for Ford Motor Company in sales, was a General Motors Sales Master and was licensed by the American Federation of Musicians to book Canadian musicians through Music Shoppe International. Before politics Young also worked as a manager for Bell Canada.
He lives in Oakville with wife Gloria whom he married in 1980. They raised three children, daughters, Madeline and Vanessa; and son, Hart.
Young served as President of the Lewis Garnsworthy Tower, a not-for-profit supportive housing residence for seniors in Toronto, and on the board of St. Hilda's Towers from 2001 to 2013. He was vice-chair of the Ontario Association of Former Parliamentarians (2001) and Founding President of Policy Alliance Inc., a government relations firm (2001).
Drug advocacy
Young's fifteen-year-old daughter Vanessa died in 2000 after taking the Johnson & Johnson prescription drug cisapride (brand name in Canada: Prepulsid). Young became a consumer advocate after this incident, and has been fighting for a more stringent and protective drug-monitoring system in Canada. He founded Drug Safety Canada to advocate for safe prescription drugs, and also initiated a hundred million dollar class action lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson and Health Canada in 2000, and an individual lawsuit, later settled after a six-year court battle. This story is told in detail in Young's 2009 book Death by Prescription. He introduced a Private member's bill on April 20, 2009, to establish an independent drug agency for Canada similar to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission or the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, focussing solely on prescription drug safety. The bill has been reintroduced through subsequent parliamentary sessions up to the most recent (), the 41st Canadian Parliament, 2nd session, but has never advanced to become law. After earlier government legislation had died on the Order Paper at the dissolution of the 39th Canadian Parliament, Young conceived and sponsored Bill C-17, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act — Protecting Canadians from Unsafe Drugs Act (Vanessa's Law), named for his late daughter, which received Royal assent on November 6, 2014. The law gives Health Canada powers to order drug companies to provide clearly worded safety warnings to patients and doctors for all drugs in plain language, to change drug labels for drugs on the market to clearly reflect new safety information, to conduct new studies on drugs that have shown safety concerns, to take unsafe drugs off the market and the supply chain within 48 hours, and to compel health care institutions to report all serious adverse drug reactions to Health Canada. It also, amongst other powers, allows the Minister of Health to compel drug companies to make confidential business information (CBI) on their drugs available to specific entities such as the provinces and researchers, when patients are at risk of serious harm. The law also provides for fines, the level of which is at a court's discretion, for criminal negligence that harms patients.
Authors in the Canadian Medical Association Journal have noted concerns with the enforcement of drug reaction reporting the law requires, with heretofore onerous reporting methods leading to low rates of report (5%), and suggesting "Reports for adverse drug reactions must be simple and quick to complete, and support clinical decisions at the point of care". Others have suggested the law will fail as it excludes natural remedies.