Barry Sherman was the philanthropist who once yanked back more than $25 million in promised donations — to a university, two hospitals and an aid group — because he was unhappy with decisions made on Parliament Hill.

The founder of pharmaceutical giant Apotex, who died at 75 on Dec. 15, was notably generous throughout his lifetime, donating millions of dollars and plenty of time to charities, research and initiatives.

He also used that donation power as a political tool.

A police investigation continues into the deaths of Sherman and his 70-year-old wife, Honey, after they were found in their North York mansion this month. Their cause of death was ruled to be ligature neck compression.

In 1999, Sherman reneged on a $20 million gift to the University of Toronto for its centre for cellular and molecular biology research, giving $1 million instead. He also pulled back $5 million to Mount Sinai Hospital, $225,000 to Princess Margaret Hospital and half of Apotex’s United Way contributions.

He rescinded those donations because Jean Chrétien’s government moved to apply retroactive regulations on the drug industry — which Sherman told the Star damaged Apotex’s earning potential. He added that the policy was unlikely to change “unless we get a new prime minister.”

All Toronto Liberal cabinet members opposed the decision, Sherman told the Star, and no MPs were protesting publicly “because it would cost them their job.”

Sherman had also requested that then University of Toronto president Robert Prichard assist Apotex’s lobbying efforts, according to meeting minutes of the university’s executive committee. Prichard wrote to Chrétien, telling him that the decision could jeopardize the medical sciences centre, according to a report from the Canadian Association of University Teachers.

“I signed a letter prepared by the university’s development division without considering it carefully,” Prichard told the Star via email Tuesday. “It was a mistake. I apologized to the university community for doing so.”

Apotex would later donate further to the university.

Around the same time, Apotex pulled funding from a clinical researcher, Dr. Nancy Olivieri, a blood disease specialist at SickKids, researching the drug deferiprone in a clinical trial for the drug company.

Olivieri, the lead researcher in the trial, raised concerns about the efficacy and potentially life-threatening risks of the drug, and Apotex threatened legal action and pulled funding.

It isn’t unheard of for donors to pull back millions of dollars if they’re unhappy with an outcome, said David Callahan, the American author of The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age.

“There’s a case, a famous lawsuit against Princeton University, where the family that had donated to the school of public affairs there wanted the donation returned,” he said.

The family had donated millions explicitly for educating students to work for government — but they felt it was being misused.

“These gifts are often carefully negotiated and the terms of the gifts are laid out in documents called gift instruments,” Callahan said. “If donors feel that those terms are not abided by they can and do sometimes ask for their money back.”

What billionaires ask for in exchange isn’t always made public, he said, adding that charitable gifts can sometimes be “as effective” as giving money to political candidates.

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“There’s that sort of general level of societal influence and political and business connections that come from being a high-end philanthropist like Barry Sherman,” he said. “Philanthropic dollars can be directly deployed to impact policy outcomes . . . and often, you know, these mega-givers will also be giving money to politicians and political parties, so they’ll engage in both kinds of giving.”

Political contribution records showed the Shermans gave smaller donations.

Sherman consistently donated to the Liberal party, with $3,808.94 in recorded federal donations since 2005. Honey Sherman gave $10,158.94 to the Liberals and $3,600 to the Conservatives since 2006. Apotex Inc. has donated $2,566 to the Liberal party since 2004, and $400 to the Conservatives.

Provincially, Apotex has given $92,086 since 2014, including $75,015 to the Liberal party and $10,613.74 to the Progressive Conservative party

Municipally, Barry has made two donations since 2010, for under $1,000 each.

“One gets a sense of their political influence by who turned up at the memorial service — the words from the Prime Minister, from John Tory,” Jim Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers in 1999, told the Star.

Premier Kathleen Wynne was also present at the memorial, and tributes flooded in from political figures from former premier Bob Rae to Health Minister Eric Hoskins and Senator Linda Frum.

Tory has relayed the Sherman family’s concerns about the ongoing investigation into their deaths to the Toronto police chief, prompting mixed responses.

“As a person, (Sherman) was almost single-minded in pursuing the interests of his company as he understood them,” Turk said. “And that would mean both through litigation (and) through political process.”

Just days before he died, Sherman was attempting to stop an investigation into a political fundraiser he hosted during the last federal election, for now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

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