Private Health,
Public Risk?

Pure North is a privately run, non-profit foundation that offers an alternative, preventive-health program involving multi-vitamins and supplements, including high doses of vitamin D. It focuses on vulnerable populations such as seniors, the homeless and the addicted.

Through freedom of information, CBC News obtained thousands of pages of internal government documents. They show provincial health officials internally raised serious safety, ethics, evidence, and liability issues about Pure Norths alternative health program.

It is not known if then health minister Fred Horne, who approved the $10-million grant, was aware of these issues.

Horne did not respond to several interview requests from CBC News over the past several weeks.

Internal documents show that although Alberta health officials, and even some inner-city doctors in Calgary, raised serious public safety issues about the Pure North program, it appears nothing was done to address them. By contrast, when similar issues arose in Vancouver, public health officials effectively forced the food banks to shut down the Pure North program.

Pure North distributed a supplement at the Vancouver food banks that did not have a natural product number from Health Canada, required to verify its strength, purity, and safety.

Carter said Pure North mistakenly believed the manufacturer had obtained the product number. He said the foundation pulled the supplement as soon as it was alerted to the problem.

Health Canada told CBC News it issued a compliance letter to Pure North, the foundation voluntarily complied, and the federal regulator did not sanction them.

Carter confirmed Pure North distributed the same supplement in Alberta for a matter of months, not years.

Carter said 50,000 people have participated in the Pure North program without a single safety issue.

We have seen no adverse effects in participants because we monitor very closely, he said.

Pure North was founded in 2007 by Allan Markin, a part owner of the Calgary Flames and the former chairman of Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL), one of Canadas largest oil and gas companies. He started, and personally funded, the wellness program years earlier for CNRL employees and their families.

In 2015, Canadian Business magazine estimated Markins personal fortune was $600 million. Carter said Markin has spent more than $250 million on Pure North and related organizations.

The mandate of the foundation, a non-profit charity, is to prevent disease and illness, and in doing so make people feel better and live longer.

Weve got some research thats coming out which is going to show that Pure North excuse me for saying this looks like theyre on the side of angels," Markin says in a video posted to the Pure North website. "Pretty powerful.

Markin claims his foundations program, if broadly implemented, could save the health-care system hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

Pure North employs doctors, naturopathic physicians, nurses and other health-care professionals who serve in the foundations clinics throughout Alberta, B.C., and Saskatchewan. The foundation focuses on vulnerable populations such as the homeless, addicted and elderly, and operates free clinics in such places as homeless shelters and on Indigenous reserves.

Participants are given a variety of high-dose vitamins and supplements, along with lifestyle counselling. They are also given the opportunity in some cases to have mercury fillings removed from their teeth and heavy metal removed from their blood through chelation therapy.

With consent, Pure North collects the blood and other medical information from many participants to be used for academic studies and for the foundations own analysis.

The internal Alberta government documents detail an aggressive campaign by Markin and Pure North beginning in 2012 the same year he left CNRL to secure funding for the program, with an ultimate goal of embedding its controversial treatments in the provinces health-care system.

After numerous meetings between Markin, Pure North staff, and officials from Health and Human Services over several months, two senior civil servants attempted to dampen the foundations determined pursuit of funding and a partnership.

In a March 6, 2013 letter, Susan Williams from Health, and Susan Taylor from Human Services, told Markin the government hired the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health to provide a high-level assessment of the Pure North program. The government also sought input from legal and legislative services.

While some of the supplements provided by Pure North are generally safe and may have benefits in those with a poor diet, over-supplementation may lead to adverse events. For example, overdose of vitamin D may lead to toxicity, the letter said, adding that high dose vitamin C may promote kidney stone formation.

The letter said Health Canada supports vitamin D supplementation, but not to the levels proposed by Pure North outside of a research context.

CBC News obtained a Pure North protocol, signed by a doctor, which shows some participants in its program at the Calgary Drop-In Centre, a homeless shelter, could have been given a vitamin D dose of 50,000 international units (IU) every two days for six days, and then 10,000 IU daily for two months. Health Canadas recommended dietary allowance is 600 to 800 IU and its safe tolerable upper intake level is 4,000 IU.

In a 2015 news release that specifically referenced Pure North, Health Canada said there are no health benefits associated with vitamin D intakes above the recommended dietary allowance and it advised Canadians to keep their total nutrient intake below the (safe tolerable upper intake level) to avoid possible adverse effects.

In their letter, Williams and Taylor also said there was no high-quality evidence to support the removal of mercury fillings to treat or prevent heavy metal toxicity.

They told Markin that for the government to reconsider Pure Norths funding proposal, we require high-quality evidence on short- and long-term clinical outcomes of the components of the Pure North program and the program as a whole, with clinical leadership and sponsorship of the proposal.

Furthermore, an ethical review of the proposal to determine its appropriateness in terms of the approaches, agents, doses, and other key components of the Pure North program, and the program as a whole, is required.

But although Williams and Taylor had told Pure North it must have ethical approval, internal documents show that requirement was inexplicably abandoned just six days before Alberta Health gave Pure North $10 million.

For more than a year, Alberta Health and Pure North discussed funding a research project that would require stringent ethical oversight. But internal documents show that on Dec. 17, 2013, six days before health minister Fred Horne signed the funding agreement, the grants stated purpose was changed from a research project to simply an expansion of Pure Norths already existing seniors program.

That change eliminated the need for Pure North to seek outside approval for what some experts say was essentially a human-subject study that would eventually involve more than 7,300 Alberta seniors.

Pure North spokesperson Stephen Carter said the funding agreement was changed simply because Alberta Health generally doesnt fund research projects. He said the ministry decided to change the funding agreement and we agreed to shift the project to providing direct health care.

Carter insists Pure North was not conducting a study; it was simply providing the participants health data to several university researchers as a secondary use of the data. The university researchers had ethical approval, but only to analyze the data gathered by Pure North.

He said a study produced by the University of Calgary School of Public Policy showed the cost effectiveness of the actual program and that other reviews by researchers clearly showed the health benefits. He also provided CBC News with what he said were 10 peer-reviewed studies that showed the "tremendous impact" of Pure North's overall seniors program.