Bill C-32 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Tobacco Act

This enactment amends the Tobacco Act to provide additional protection for youth from tobacco marketing. It repeals the exception that permits tobacco advertising in publications with an adult readership of not less than 85%. It prohibits the packaging, importation for sale, distribution and sale of little cigars and blunt wraps unless they are in a package that contains at least 20 little cigars or blunt wraps. It also prohibits the manufacture and sale of cigarettes, little cigars and blunt wraps that contain the additives set out in a new schedule to that Act, as well as the packaging of those products in a manner that suggests that they contain a prohibited additive. It also prohibits the manufacture and sale of tobacco products unless all of the required information about their composition is submitted to the Minister.

[Rob Cunningham]

Our organization is involved in various education campaigns, smoking cessation programs.

The federal government is to be commended for Bill C-32 with respect to flavours, and for introducing the new picture-based health warnings that have a toll-free quit line. These are very significant measures, by national comparison.

With respect to flavoured tobacco, some new products have since been put on the market, and we would certainly support a government going further to ban all flavoured tobacco products and follow the models of Ontario and Alberta.

There's a series of other measures that could be implemented as part of a comprehensive federal tobacco control strategy. Among those is plain packaging. It was introduced in Australia and was very encouraging.

There's a series of further measures, in terms of a strategy that could be implemented.

Tobacco Act

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-438, An Act to amend the Tobacco Act (smokeless tobacco and little cigars).

Mr. Speaker, two and a half years ago members of this place passed Bill C-32. That bill was intended to ban flavoured cigarillos because the evidence was clear that young Canadians were consuming these products as a stepping stone to using non-flavoured tobacco products. But Bill C-32 contained a giant loophole that has allowed flavoured cigarillos in a modified form to continue to be sold, something the government has been aware of since the summer of 2010 but failed to take action to correct.

Sadly, the government has also not fulfilled its 2010 promise to ban all forms of flavoured smokeless tobacco, like flavoured chew, in recognition that those products are used disproportionately by Canada's youth.

This lack of action means that I am here again to re-table my bill, which would amend the Tobacco Act to correct both of these issues.

I am honoured that the member for Beaches—East York has stepped up to second the bill.

I urge the government to listen to the experts working on the front lines to protect the health of Canada's youth and adopt the bill as soon as possible.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Dr. Mike Sharma, Expert Representative, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada]

Madam Chair, committee members, on behalf of the Heart and Stroke Foundation, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before you to share our perspectives on chronic diseases related to aging. I'm Mike Sharma and I'm here as an expert representative of the Heart and Stroke Foundation. I'm a stroke neurologist and researcher, as well as a deputy director, clinical affairs, of the Canadian Stroke Network. Joining me is Manuel Arango, director of health policy at the foundation.

First and foremost, I'd like to express our gratitude to Parliament for a number of initiatives and commitments that will help reduce the impact of heart disease and stroke in Canada, including the recent adoption of new and improved tobacco package warnings, Bill C-32, which prohibits the use of certain flavourings in tobacco products and associated marketing; the commitment to implement defibrillators in hockey arenas across the country; and the commitment to include cardiovascular measures within the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer's longitudinal study of chronic disease known as the “Tomorrow Project”.

The Heart and Stroke Foundation is a national volunteer-based health charity founded over 50 years ago, with more than 130,000 volunteers and two million donors. We work to reduce heart disease and stroke by funding research, promoting healthy living to Canadians, and by working with all levels of government to inform and influence health policy.

We're aging. Every day 1,000 people in Canada turn 65, entering a stage of life with an increasing risk of stroke, heart disease, and dementia. The number of seniors in Canada is projected to increase from 4.2 million to 9.8 million between 2005 and 2036. Heart disease and stroke combined are the leading causes of death among Canadians 65 years of age and over, killing over 60,000 seniors annually. There are over 50,000 hospital admissions for stroke in Canada each year. That's one stroke every ten minutes. When you take into account that we don't hospitalize all strokes, the reality is that the number is much greater.

Those strokes that are hospitalized are called overt strokes, which produce acute traumatic symptoms. In addition to this, there are between five and ten times as many covert strokes. These are ones that do not produce acute manifestations but result in disability by other mechanisms. At a minimum, 300,000 Canadians are living with the effects of stroke today.

In view of the time constraints, we've chosen to focus on three main themes: stroke, aging, and economics; vascular disease of the brain and dementia; and, briefly, heart disease and aging.

In Canada, stroke is the leading cause of death and disability, costing $56,000 for the first six months of care alone. Estimated yearly costs are in excess of $5 billion. While 35% of individuals impacted by stroke are under the age of 65, age is the single strongest predictor of stroke occurrence. Stroke occurrence begins to rise at the age of 55, and doubles for each decade thereafter. Stroke results in physical, cognitive, and psychiatric dysfunction. Individuals have an impairment in their ability to make decisions, use language, think, and remember. Thirty percent are depressed at three months. Between one-third and two-thirds require rehabilitation for physical, cognitive, or communication difficulties. Fewer than 50% of individuals with stroke return to work, placing an additional burden on their caregivers and families.

In contrast to overt or large strokes, covert strokes cause functional impairment without producing overt symptoms or abrupt onset symptoms. We know that 95% of people age 65 and older show abnormalities in the brain related to disease of small blood vessels within the brain. Further, a quarter of healthy seniors aged 70 have evidence of small, silent strokes. Similar strokes are seen in 14% of Canadians aged 60. These small, silent strokes result in dementia, which in fact is a vascular disease.

Alzheimer's disease, which is often thought to be synonymous with dementia, rarely occurs alone. The vast majority of dementia consists of a combination of Alzheimer's disease and stroke, which goes by the term “mixed dementia”. By 2038, the number of Canadians with dementia will increase by a factor of 2.3, with regard to the 2008 level, which is to say, 1.1 million people. The lifetime risk for stroke or dementia in our country is one in two for women and one in three for men.

The increasing rate of obesity and diabetes, combined with aging of the population, will contribute to an increase in all forms of heart disease, including ischemic heart disease, heart failure, and cardiac arrhythmias. This will strain the health care system and have a major economic impact on the country. As an example, it is estimated that currently there are 500,000 Canadians living with heart failure and 50,000 new patients are diagnosed each year.

What can we do?

There are some changes to the health care system that will help. The Heart and Stroke Foundation is very proud to be part of the joint initiative known as the Canadian stroke strategy, a national initiative that is aimed at improving stroke care across Canada. The strategy has targeted the systematic implementation of best practices, thereby preventing stroke, minimizing damage when it occurs, and improving functional recovery.

In the upcoming health accord the federal government needs to ensure adequate transfer payments to the provinces in order to enable incorporation of the best practices from the Canadian stroke strategy, including the establishment of dedicated stroke units and improved rehabilitation and palliative care services for those living with chronic diseases.

Prevention is key. Prevention can help delay and compress chronic diseases in later life, saving money to the system and the economy and improving the quality of life. Prevention essentially is all about making the healthy choice the easy choice, creating environments that make it easy to live a healthy lifestyle.

Prevention of vascular disease requires addressing a number of risk factors, many of which can also contribute to cancer, diabetes, obesity, and other chronic illnesses. At a high level, prevention includes a healthy diet, physical activity, and avoidance of tobacco.

There are a number of potential measures to address these risk factors, but here are a few we believe we must act on now.

The brain and the heart are the primary targets of high blood pressure. High blood pressure can be prevented by healthy nutrition, especially by reductions in sodium consumption, and increased physical acitivity.

With respect to sodium consumption, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada urges the federal government to act upon the recommendations of the sodium working group, who released their final report last July. In particular, we call upon the government to establish sodium reduction targets for the food industry, with an accompanying monitoring mechanism. These targets should reduce the average daily intake of salt to 2,300 miligrams by 2016. If these voluntary targets fail to produce desired outcomes, we support the implementation of regulations.

Reduction in trans-fat content in our diet is important. Trans-fat content in Canadian diets is much higher than international recommendations. We call upon the government to introduce trans-fat regulations.

Fruit and vegetable consumption is too low in this country and is getting more and more expensive for seniors living on limited budgets. The federal government should ensure that agricultural policy and subsidies facilitate the production and distribution of fresh, affordable fruit and vegetables.

Community design and infrastructure that supports active living is particularly important for older people who have conditions that make mobility more challenging. Appealing, accessible, and safe facilities for walking and cycling will make it easier for Canadians of all ages to enjoy physical activity. Also important is the provision of safe and attractive recreational facilities and parks.

We call upon the federal government to work with the provinces to establish an active transportation fund to provide long-term funding for municipal infrastructure that supports active transportation. We also urge the federal government to renew the very successful Canadian recreational infrastructure fund to ensure continued investment in recreational facilities and parks.

Tobacco is a hugely important risk factor. Smokers have strokes ten years earlier than non-smokers. It is critical that the government renew the federal tobacco control strategy and maintain the annual funding for this strategy at no less than its current funding level of $43 million per annum.

Acute treatment for strokes substantially reduces disability, but must be delivered very rapidly after stroke onset. The most common reason that these treatments are not delivered is delay. We urge the government to support public awareness campaigns that teach people to recognize the signs of stroke and respond appropriately.

Madam Chair, acting on these recommendations will help to reduce the impact of chronic diseases on our aging population and our economy.

Thank you for the opportunity to provide our perspective today before your committee.

[Rob Cunningham]

Bill C-32, which was studied by this committee and passed by Parliament, prohibits flavoured little cigars. Prior to the passing of the bill, we noticed a strong increase in the sales of cigarillos in chocolate, mint, peach, vanilla and raspberry flavours, which were very popular among young people. That's unbelievable considering that it's a harmful and addictive product.

That excellent bill, introduced by the Minister of Health, Ms. Aglukkaq, was supported by all the parties. Under the regulations, the new warnings will apply to little cigars, as set out in Bill C-32—and that is a good thing—even if they aren't flavoured.

In addition, I want to remind you that a Senate committee studied this bill and heard from witnesses who said that, if the bill were passed, the Rothmans, Benson & Hedges plant in Quebec would have to close. The bill was passed, and the plant is still open. So, the sky did not fall. We always hear about how the sky will fall.

Regarding the Shorr Packaging case Mr. Haslam just mentioned, it was well after 2000, when regulations on the new packaging were made.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Thank you.

I have a question that I think will go to Mr. Glover. At this committee on December 2, the Minister of Health said that she and her department were aware of the loophole in former Bill C-32 concerning cigarillos, and said that she'd be looking into solving this problem. I'm wondering what has happened on that.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-631, An Act to amend the Tobacco Act (smokeless tobacco and little cigars).

Mr. Speaker, health experts agree that flavoured tobacco products are consumed by young Canadians as a stepping stone to consuming non-flavoured tobacco products. By banning flavoured tobaccos, we will help reduce smoking rates in Canada.

Bill C-32, which amended the Tobacco Act and came into force in October 2009, was supposed to ban flavoured cigarillos. However, we learned last year that tobacco manufacturers found a loophole in the definitions that allowed them to continue selling flavoured cigarillos.

The bill I am tabling today would close that loophole. The bill would also ban all forms of flavoured smokeless tobacco, something that government officials promised to do by June 2010. They did not fulfill that promise and this bill would fill that legislative gap.

I would like to thank my New Democrat health critic predecessor, Judy Wasylycia-Leis, for her significant efforts to have flavoured tobacco banned in Canada and the work that led to the passage of Bill C-32. While she is no longer a member of Parliament, her legacy of good work remains a testament to her time in office.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Rob Cunningham, Senior Policy Analyst, Canadian Cancer Society]

Regarding tobacco control, I'd like to begin by expressing support and congratulations for two very important measures that have been brought forward: Bill C-32 on flavoured tobacco and the new, enhanced picture warnings for cigarette packages. Both of these measures show world leadership. The Minister of Health, all political parties, and members of this committee deserve praise and thanks.

For this committee's current study on healthy living, and as part of achieving broader healthy living objectives, I simply want to underline the ongoing crucial importance of tobacco control.

Tobacco remains the leading preventable cause of disease and death in Canada.

Le tabac tue. Tobacco kills 37,000 each year.

We've made clear progress in reducing smoking, but an enormous amount of work remains to be done. Fully 18% of Canadians and 13% of youth aged 15 to 19 were current smokers in 2009.

The 10-year-old tobacco control strategy announced in 2001 expires very soon, March 31, 2011. It is essential that this strategy be continued. We need, as always, an approach to tobacco control that is comprehensive in nature. Within Health Canada's comprehensive strategy, the programming component is vital. The minister has referred to $15.7 million in funded cessation, youth prevention, and other initiatives. These should continue; we cannot let up. And new initiatives must be pursued, such as the very commendable social media campaign that will be linked to package warnings. Ensuring that the federal strategy is continued without any gap would ensure that the preparatory work for the social media campaign as well as many other initiatives would be carried out in full without interruption.

Given high aboriginal smoking rates, including 59% for first nations individuals on reserves, additional aboriginal initiatives of course are needed.

In closing, tobacco control remains pivotal for what we will achieve in the years ahead in terms of overall healthy living for Canadians.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.

[Linda Piazza, Director, Research and Health Policy, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee members.

I'm Linda Piazza, the director of research and health policy at the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. On behalf of the foundation, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to share our perspective on what we need to do as a society to make healthy living the easy choice for Canadians.

The Heart and Stroke Foundation is a national, volunteer-based health charity. We've worked for over 50 years to prevent heart disease and stroke by funding cardiovascular research, promoting healthy living to Canadians, and working with all levels of government to influence heart-healthy policies for Canadians.

Our cause is urgent. Heart disease and stroke cost Canada $20.9 billion annually in health care costs and lost productivity. They represent the number one cause of death among women, of drug prescriptions, and of hospital admissions in Canada.

Heart disease and stroke share many of the same risk factors as other chronic diseases, including unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, and smoking. The following are some of the measures that we need to address now, within a comprehensive approach.

The consumption of sodium is far too high in this country. Adult Canadians consume about 3,500 milligrams a day, far above the recommended adequate level for most adults of about 1,500 milligrams a day. Excess sodium consumption leads to high blood pressure, which is the most significant risk factor for heart disease and stroke.

We urge the government to implement the recommendations of the federally appointed sodium working group. In particular, it is critical that the federal government implement, in a transparent way, a process to monitor sodium levels in our food supply as soon as possible.

Secondly, on nutrition tax policies, with respect to sugar-sweetened beverages, Health Canada, in its current children's health and safety campaign, as you've just heard, has correctly highlighted the link between the over-consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and childhood obesity. Like trans fats, sugar-sweetened beverages have no nutritional value whatsoever--only health risks.

The Heart and Stroke Foundation commissioned a scoping review that we presented at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in October. It looked at the effectiveness of economic policies to address health and obesity. The report recommended that it was time to move on the taxation of sugar-sweetened beverages. We call on the federal government to seriously explore this initiative.

We need to develop communities that make it easy to be physically active. The federal government can play a role by ensuring that a percentage of transportation infrastructure funding is set aside for active transportation initiatives and also by renewing the successful recreational infrastructure Canada fund.

Trans fats are responsible for thousands of cardiac deaths every year in Canada. Like sugar-sweetened beverages, trans fats have no health benefits--only risks. Health Canada reports that 25% of the food supply is still laced with heart-clogging trans. Moreover, foods that are often consumed by children, such as cookies, cakes, doughnuts, and brownies, remain alarmingly high in trans fats. We need federal regulations in this area--no two ways about it.

It is critical that the federal government make nutrition labelling easier to understand for Canadians. The recent nutrition facts educational initiative is a start; however, much more needs to be done. For example, it is imperative that we standardize serving sizes for like products on the nutrition facts panel.

Over 80% of the food and beverages marketed to children in Canada are unhealthy. Again, it is critical that we work together to implement initiatives to eliminate this type of marketing.

Funding is also critically important for healthy living. The Heart and Stroke Foundation has proposed a heart health action plan for Canada, comprised of four initiatives. One of these initiatives calls for federal support for a national campaign to raise public awareness about women and heart disease. You've just heard me say that it's the number one cause of death among Canadian women. Only 23% of women in Canada understand how serious a health concern heart disease and stroke are for them.

On tobacco, I would like to underscore that as a key action on healthy living, we must continue our work on tobacco control. We applaud the new package warnings, as well as the flavours ban, in Bill C-32. We at the Heart and Stroke Foundation urge continuation of the federal tobacco control strategy to ensure that prevention and cessation programs are not halted. The strategy expires imminently on March 31, 2011.

Finally, aside from action on the domestic front, the federal government has a unique opportunity to champion several of the issues we have raised today at the upcoming United Nations noncommunicable diseases summit in New York City this coming fall. We urge the government to do so.

Thank you very much.

[Rob Cunningham, Senior Policy Analyst, Canadian Cancer Society]

Good afternoon. My name is Rob Cunningham. I am a lawyer and senior policy analyst at the Canadian Cancer Society.

Health Canada has completed excellent research on new package health warnings, a crucial pillar of Canada's comprehensive tobacco control strategy. The Canadian Cancer Society recommends that the government introduce as soon as possible a new series of warnings covering 75% of the package, front and back, as well as a series of improved messages inside packages.

Before continuing, I would like to extend praise to Minister Aglukkaq and to the Prime Minister for bringing forward Bill C-32 last year, and to express appreciation to all political parties for their support of the bill, including the MPs here today who were on the health committee at that time. The legislation banning flavours in cigarettes and little cigars is the best of its kind in the world. Bill C-32 recently proved influential in the adoption of new international guidelines on flavoured tobacco products.

This newly released Canadian Cancer Society report, “Cigarette Package Health Warnings: International Status Report”, shows that Canada is increasingly falling behind other countries. In 2001, Canada was the first country with picture warnings, and Canada had the largest warnings, at 50%. Now 39 countries and territories have picture warnings, and many of the countries requiring picture warnings after Canada are now on their second, third, or fourth round of pictures. For size, Canada has fallen from first to fifteenth in the international rankings, with more countries leap-frogging over Canada all the time. Uruguay has the largest warnings at 80%, with Honduras also about to have 80%. That's Uruguay and Honduras.

Australia has decided to go even further and require plain packaging. That is, maintaining health warnings but removing all brand colours and logos from packages. Warning size is crucial. The larger the size, the larger the impact. As a bilingual country, Canada needs more space than most other countries.

The tobacco industry will undoubtedly bring forward legal arguments against larger warnings. But such arguments would be entirely without merit. As a lawyer focusing in this area, I know the tobacco industry always attempts to bring forward legal arguments to block legislation. For the existing 50% package warnings, when they were brought forward a decade ago, the industry claimed that the warnings could not be justified legally. However, in 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada soundly and unanimously rejected the industry's claims. The industry simply cannot be believed.

When picture warnings were initially considered in 2000, incredibly the industry argued that it was technically impossible in Canada to print colour pictures on cigarette packages. Imagine! But of course the impossible proved possible and picture warnings were easily printed, as we see today.

We join with provincial health ministers in supporting the inclusion of a quit line number on every package as part of warning messaging. This toll-free number would make it easier for smokers, including residents of rural and remote areas, to get help in quitting from trained specialists. The experience in other countries is that quit line calls increase substantially once the number is on the package.

Contraband is an important issue, and governments should take action. But as newspaper editorials have stated, the government should take action on both contraband as well as new warnings. It's also worth nothing that contraband volumes in Canada have decreased dramatically over the last 18 months, and that cigarettes with required package warnings represent the overwhelming volume of sales in Canada. Tobacco products are the leading preventable killer of Canadians. We need a multifaceted approach.

Last week the minister identified social media as a means to reach youth. There is potential here. Indeed the Canadian Cancer Society's smoking cessation services already use social media: Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, and web-based messaging. Social media, however, should be used in addition to warnings. It should not be a substitute. Social media should not delay warnings. Both social media and warnings should be used, and each could enhance the impact of the other. A web address on the package could provide a link to and increase the impact of social media.

It must be emphasized that package warnings have credible and unparalleled exposure, reaching every smoker every day, as well as individuals around smokers: friends, family, co-workers.

Tobacco companies oppose larger 75% warnings knowing full well that warnings will reduce tobacco sales. But that is exactly the point.

Well-designed warnings increase awareness of the health effects of tobacco and decrease consumption, among both adults and youth.

In conclusion, we reiterate our considered recommendation that the government proceed on a pressing basis with new, improved 75% picture warnings that include a toll-free (1-800) quit line number and a web address, as well as with improved interior messages.

Merci. Thank you.

[Dr. Robert Strang, Chief Public Health Officer, Department of Health Promotion and Protection, Government of Nova Scotia]

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the committee for the invitation to appear today on this very important public health matter to Nova Scotians and to all Canadians.

I would like to take a moment to acknowledge my colleague, Steve Machat, manager of tobacco control for the Department of Health Promotion and Protection, who's attending these hearings with me today. Steve is Nova Scotia's representative on the F/P/T Tobacco Liaison Committee and has been directly involved in the discussions regarding health warnings that have taken place at that committee over the past two to three years.

Before speaking directly to the need to urgently renew health warning labels on tobacco products, I would like to provide some context for the committee.

Tobacco does remain the leading cause of illness and premature death in Canada. Despite common perception, the work in tobacco control is far from done.

Internationally, Canada has been a leader in tobacco control in general and health warning labels in particular, being the first country to require these in 2001. However, as has been outlined in a recent report from the Canadian Cancer Society, Canada has now fallen to 15th alongside 18 other countries when ranked on cigarette package health warnings.

In Canada, we've made substantial progress in tobacco control, reducing our overall smoking rate from 28% in 2000 to 17.5% in 2009, and our youth--which are 15- to 19-year-olds--smoking rate from 28% in 2000 to 13% in 2009. This progress has been the result of a comprehensive, multi-faceted approach with leadership at all three levels of government on critical policy areas such as pricing, advertising, and protection from exposure to second-hand smoke. Leadership from the federal government has been critical and much appreciated in the first two of these areas.

However, much of the decrease in smoking rates occurred from 2000 to 2005, with very little change in smoking rates since then. Tobacco control in Canada has stalled. As long as there's an industry with a mandate to make profits for shareholders from the sale of tobacco products, maintaining our progress to date, let alone achieving further reductions in smoking rates, will require a continuation of the comprehensive, multi-faceted approach with the renewal and change of tactics based on the latest evidence.

In Canada, tobacco product packaging is the key remaining source of tobacco advertising. Renewed health warnings comprising at least 75% of the package space will decrease this advertising, make the health warnings more effective, and provide smokers with a single 1-800-quit line. All this will play a major role in continuing to decrease our smoking rates. That's why the tobacco industry does not want these renewed health warnings and it is exactly why we need to do it now.

Provincial and territorial governments remain puzzled as to why the initiative to renew health warnings was stopped at the last minute, with no consultation. The background work on this initiative, which was shared through the F/P/T Tobacco Liaison Committee, had been completed, and there was no hint of concern or reluctance on the part of Health Canada officials as this work progressed.

It's also extremely disappointing to learn that the tobacco industry was informed about Health Canada's decision several months before provincial-territorial partners or the tobacco control community.

One has to wonder what role the tobacco industry played in the decision not to move ahead with the renewal of health warning labels on tobacco packages. After all, their historic tactics are delay, distract, and distort, and it is known they have access and influence. As was presented recently to this committee, Health Canada held four private meetings with the tobacco industry between November 2009 and May 2010.

The delay in the visual health warning and the toll-free number has only one beneficiary: the tobacco industry.

In addition, Health Canada's rationale for the delay does not stand up to scrutiny either. We do not need more study on the effectiveness of health warnings and the need for Canada's to be renewed. We just need to do it. We do not need more study to further restrict tobacco advertising on tobacco packaging. We just need to do it. We do not need to hold up the renewal of health warnings on cigarette packages while we work to find more effective ways to use the Internet and social media to communicate health warnings and other information about tobacco products. Implementing cigarette package changes can happen now and the remaining complementary approaches can be implemented as they are developed.

Lastly, as important as it is, we cannot focus just on contraband. Contrary to what the aggressive advertising campaign of the tobacco industry would have you believe, the vast majority of cigarettes smoked by young people across Canada are legal. As stated earlier, continued success in tobacco control will require a comprehensive, multi-faceted approach. The best way to prevent contraband use is to prevent people from smoking cigarettes, period, and that's through a comprehensive approach.

The tobacco industry wants and needs to distract us from such an approach because they know it will work to further reduce smoking rates. As an individual whose professional and legal responsibility is to work to protect the health of Nova Scotians, I need to ask why the interests of the tobacco industry are being placed above the health of Canadians and the interests of provincial and territorial governments.

The federal government has shown leadership in tobacco control over many years. Bill C-32 is a shining example. It prohibits flavoured tobacco and advertising of such products. Nova Scotia, along with all other provinces and territories, had urged the federal government to address this issue. I am fully aware that Bill C-32 was and continues to be a lightning rod for the global tobacco industry. We know they don't like it. And let me say to the federal government, thank you for staying steadfast and resisting calls to weaken the legislation.

The renewal of health warning labels on tobacco products needs similar political will and leadership. The rationale is clear, the background work has been done, and there are no valid reasons to not move ahead now. Failure to act will weaken the tobacco control efforts of other levels of governments and society, it will create avoidable cost utilization of already stressed provincial and territorial health care systems, and, above all, it will cost lives.

Thank you. We welcome your questions.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Okay, thank you.

Regarding Bill C-32, we had a big success with banning flavoured cigarillos and flavoured tobacco products. That was a great success, and I know you and my predecessor, Judy Wasylycia-Leis, worked quite closely on that, but we do have a problem with some cigarillos. What some of the companies have done, as you know, is to take out the filter to make the cigarillos bigger so they can skirt the definitions.

Does the government have plans to close that loophole?

Tobacco Products

[Leona Aglukkaq, Conservative, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, in Canada we have had labels on our tobacco packages since 2001. Our government is committed to protecting the health and safety of Canadian children from the damages of tobacco. We are proud of Bill C-32, the Tobacco Act, which bans flavours that would appeal to children, sets minimum package size and bans all tobacco as it would be viewed by youth.

We will continue to enforce violations of this legislation and are encouraged by the results of the recent tobacco survey that shows that fewer young Canadians are smoking.

[Athana Mentzelopoulos]

The broad answer is that the government's view is that Parliament has enacted valid legislation regarding tobacco. Tobacco use is a unique social and health problem, and the Tobacco Act was developed specifically to try to manage that problem. In addition, the Tobacco Act has been subjected to constitutional challenges and we know as a result of the Supreme Court decision in 2007 that it is validly enacted legislation. So there is a firm basis for management of tobacco in the context of the Tobacco Act and no need to address it in the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank the officials for being here again to help explain this very important bill to us and the Canadian public.

There has been a lot of misinformation and perhaps interpretation and just misunderstanding of some of the aspects of the bill. One of the things that's close to this committee's heart is tobacco and we worked very hard together and we passed Bill C-32. I think everybody here is very proud of that. But tobacco products have a permanent statutory exemption under this bill. Only the propensity for ignition is included in the regulatory framework, and some of our stakeholders have insisted that this exclusion be deleted in the interest of the overall health of Canadians.

So why have you not changed this since the last bill? I was wondering if you could explain it to everybody in plain language and maybe give an example.

Mr. Ianiro, I talked to you about this before in one of the briefings. Would you be able to put that on the table for us?

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you.

I guess I'm concerned. We have all agreed and we all passed Bill C-32. The problem has now shifted to the illegal market.

Contraband tobacco undermines many initiatives. Illegal products have no warning labels, no emissions information, and no product controls, and they are sold directly to children. I'd like to know what more specific actions the department will be taking.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here to answer questions for us. It has been a very busy year. I wanted to take this opportunity to see if I could get an update on a bill that we did pass, a bill that was very important to me, and on which everyone around the committee did a great job. The health and safety of kids is really important to all of us, and to all Canadians, especially with regard to smoking.

Last year, we did the Cracking Down on Tobacco Marketing Aimed at Youth Act, formally Bill C-32, which received royal assent on October 8, 2009. I was wondering if we could take this opportunity for you to give the committee an update on the implementation of this act, which we all worked so hard to put forward. Could we get an update on that?

Aboriginal Affairs

[Leona Aglukkaq, Conservative, Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, our government is committed to the health and safety of Canadians. As a minister from the north, I know full well the impact of tuberculosis in our communities.

Our government has almost doubled the spending on the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis in our aboriginal communities. We continue to support health care in the provinces and territories by increasing the transfer payments by 6% this year as well.

The approach we are taking is broader than prevention. We are also investing in housing, nutritious food, clean water, poverty. Bill C-32, the tobacco legislation--

Jobs and Economic Growth Act

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if I have the unanimous consent of my colleagues, I want to take a bit more time. I will not repeat what I said last Tuesday evening at 5:25. I will continue my speech, but if I have additional time at the end, I will be able to say more about various aspects of BillC-9.

I listened very attentively to the point of order raised by the House Leader of the Bloc Québécois, who pointed out once again all that should be done to ensure that Quebec’s constitutional prerogatives are respected here in the House.

Yesterday, the hon. member for Saint-Lambert and the hon. member for Hochelaga jointly introduced a bill that would eliminate the federal spending power to ensure that the jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces are respected. With Bill C-9, the federal government is again infringing on the exclusive jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces.

As our health critic, I am not surprised. At the Standing Committee on Health, hon. members in federalist parties ask certain questions to enhance the federal government’s role in health care, even though this is an exclusive jurisdiction of Quebec and the provinces.

Some people will say, of course, that when it comes to health care, this is a good thing because it is supposed to help people, cure them and improve their lives. But that is not the point. We should not be asking whether particular measures are wanted or desirable, but whether it is up to the federal government to concern itself with them. My colleagues will have to agree with me that this is clearly not the federal government’s role.

In part 22 of Bill C-9 on payments out of the consolidated revenue fund, we see that millions of dollars will be paid to a foundation, a not-for-profit organization, to heal injuries. The question is not whether this should be done, but whether it is the federal government’s job to do it. When it comes to health care, we want the federal government to forward all the available money to Quebec and the provinces, which are most able to make wise choices in view of the needs of the people they represent.

We worry when we see the federal government once again disregarding the exclusive jurisdictions of Quebec and the provinces and insidiously encroaching on the jurisdiction of health.

And when we listen to the leader of the Liberal Party, their ideas are no better. They want to implement Canada-wide strategies to block the initiatives that might be introduced by the Government of Quebec.

Part 2 of Bill C-9 implements an enhanced stamping regime for tobacco products. As the health critic, I am pleased to see that measures are being introduced to block measures to increase tobacco product consumption. We were in complete agreement with the government when it introduced Bill C-32 to eliminate flavoured tobacco products and cigarillos. We invite the government to continue down that path and adopt the regulations related to Bill C-32.

As far as stamping tobacco products is concerned, the government has listened to the Bloc Québécois' proposal to implement this marking system, but again, it is not nearly enough.

The government needs to take firm action to block the illegal activities of tobacco smugglers because the measures announced are largely inadequate. In the Bloc Québécois, my colleague responsible for public safety, my colleague responsible for justice, and I are calling on this government to take serious action to stop the growth in smuggling and even eliminate it altogether because if we do not want our youth to have access to cheap tobacco products then we have to address this problem head on.

I will now list a series of measures the Bloc Québécois wants to see the government put forward. It is aware of these measures since we have already talked about them in this House, but I would like to go over them again at this stage since, in part 2 of Bill C-9, the government is introducing a measure that is interesting, but falls far short of what is needed.

My time is up, so this will have to wait, but if the Minister of Public Safety or the Minister of Health would like to hear what I have to say about this, I invite them to contact me directly and I would be pleased to share my thoughts on this with the House another time.

World TB Day

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to commemorate World Tuberculosis Day. We have a government-wide approach to this issue. From a health perspective, we recently passed Bill C-32, a bill that would curb smoking, particularly with our youth.

Healthy eating is an area that is vital to the prevention of this disease. Our initiative regarding healthy foods will encourage better eating habits, particularly in northern communities. This will keep tuberculosis at lower levels.

Our government has invested almost $10 million already this year in aboriginal communities. Housing, poverty and clean water are priorities for our government. We are continuing to enhance clean drinking water monitoring in first nations communities while monitoring waterborne illness threats on reserve.

I would like to commend the doctors, nurses, researchers and community workers in Canada and abroad who are involved in the global fight against tuberculosis.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Minister, in your opening statement, you commended yourself on having passed, in 2009, legislation to remove flavouring from tobacco that would entice young people to smoke. We had supported this decision because we were favourable to it. Yet, you must know that, today, the American Congress is asking some serious questions as to the legality of this bill.

What measures is your government taking to ensure that this legislation, in other words Bill C-32, will be enforceable and binding?

[Morris Rosenberg]

Thank you for your question. First of all I want to make it clear that whenever we develop a policy and legislation, we ask ourselves if it complies with our international trade obligations. We did this in the case of bill C-32. I think that NAFTA and the former GATT recognize that there are exceptions for valid reasons, such as health and safety concerns.

Given all of the evidence we have of the damage caused to children and adolescents by tobacco, in my opinion—and according to experts in that domain—the measures contained in this bill are justified.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Things are moving more quickly than we imagined.

Mr. Rosenberg, during her presentation, the minister talked about bill C-32. I have always been very concerned by the economic issues. We understood that the bill could create some problems, on the international front as far as the WTO is concerned, given that it may violate certain WTO rules.

I would like to know how you see this issue. Will we make it enough of a priority to ensure that it complies with international rules?

[Morris Rosenberg]

Thank you.

Bill C-32, the Cracking Down on Tobacco Marketing Aimed at Youth Act, is an important piece of legislation that will help reduce the likelihood of young people smoking. It is intended to reduce the consumption of tobacco by kids by requiring things like minimum package sizes for little cigars, blunt wraps, and placing a ban on the use of additives that are attractive to youth, including flavours in little cigars, cigarettes, and blunt wraps.

The basic idea is that the tobacco industry consistently innovates in how it puts its products out. It will create products that are more attractive to children by way of the flavours they use, the colour of the packaging, and the size of the packaging so you can buy fewer than 20 cigarettes. A kid or teenager would more easily be able to afford access to cigarettes.

Bill C-32 is meant to deal with all those issues.

[Tim Uppal, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Thank you.

Something that I think is a little bit unique is that the Canadian Cancer Society wrote a letter to the editor to thank members of Parliament and members of this committee for passing Bill C-32. For members of Parliament who worked together and passed that, that was the Cracking Down on Tobacco Marketing Aimed at Youth Act. They took out an ad in my local paper and possibly others; I'm not too sure.

Can somebody here tell us a little bit more about how Bill C-32 was supposed to reduce smoking, especially among young people?

[Leona Aglukkaq, Conservative, Minister of Health]

Thank you.

Good afternoon everyone. It's my pleasure to be here with you once again.

With me today from Health Canada are Morris Rosenberg, Deputy Minister, and Alfred Tsang, chief financial officer. As well, from the Public Health Agency of Canada, we have Dr. David Butler-Jones, chief public health officer, and Jim Libbey, the chief financial officer.

This has been an extraordinary year for the health portfolio. Since I appeared before you on the main estimates in May, we have been moving forward with many important improvements to our tobacco laws, Bill C-32, and our consumer protection legislation, Bill C-6, while dealing with an emerging influenza pandemic.

Since May, we have also developed and made investments in improving protections against food-borne illnesses in response to all 57 recommendations made by independent investigator Sheila Weatherill.

Collaborations with the provinces and territories, as well as first nations communities, have been of primary importance. International discussions and information-sharing have proved to be fruitful and, in the case of the H1N1 pandemic, have helped in our success.

We are now in the middle of the largest vaccination campaign in this country's history. It is one that could only have been undertaken with the unprecedented level of cooperation we have seen between all levels of government. We have kept close contact with the World Health Organization and other international partners. Here at home, we have maintained an open line of communication with provincial and territorial governments with respect to the H1N1 virus.

From a national perspective, the vaccination program is progressing very well. From our largest urban centres to small, isolated communities, the vaccine is getting to those who want it and need it. This is the sixth week of the campaign, and more than 20 million doses have been made available to Canadians so far. We are well on our way to having enough vaccine for everyone who wants it by Christmas. I would again like to express my appreciation to the provinces, territories, and all the front line workers who are vaccinating thousands of Canadians every day.

We were able to approve a safe and effective vaccine thanks to the unprecedented level of collaboration among international regulators. This collaboration started a few years ago, and Canada has been an active participant. In fact, the key Canadian contribution occurred in the spring, when public health scientists helped identify the strain of the new virus.

Our work with the H1N1 pandemic has provided us with an opportunity to learn. A better understanding of this flu has allowed us to acquire the wisdom and knowledge to respond to the illness if a third wave comes. It will also provide us with experience and guidance for the future, if needed.

Our work on this is ongoing. That is why the Canadian Institutes of Health Research announced support for five new research projects designed to help further understand and address the H1N1 flu virus. We are already a global leader in H1N1 flu virus research. The new research being funded will help ensure that our knowledge, approach, and planning remains amongst the best in the world.

Canadian scientists will try to understand, among other things, why the virus causes some patients to develop serious respiratory illnesses. Another team will study the impact of the virus on pregnant women and try to determine why some develop complications. Another group will study the impact this pandemic is having on health care resources.

Our goal is to learn as much as we can while this virus is having its greatest impact. That kind of learning experience will guide our response to future pandemics. This pandemic is unique because we continue to learn about it the longer it is around. Obviously, we want to keep ahead of it as it continues to circulate through the country and the globe.

Earlier this year, when the illness had spread in some isolated first nations communities, we addressed the vulnerability of the hundreds of remote and isolated communities throughout the country. Ever since that first wave, Health Canada and the Public Health Agency have been helping first nations prepare for the second wave. Being from a remote community, I know so well the challenges these regions face with health issues.

A federal-provincial-territorial working group was created at the outset of the pandemic to address issues specific to isolated and remote communities. I also appointed Dr. Paul Gully, who provided the much needed support and link between the first nations communities and our offices.

By October 23 more than 95% of first nations communities had pandemic plans in place. First nations had been sent supplies needed to deal with a pandemic, and antiviral medications had already been shipped to strategic locations for easy distribution. A plan was also in place to reallocate nursing staff to facilitate vaccine rollout.

As testimony to our efforts, I have provided you with the video of my visit to the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan. This community was thoroughly prepared for the second wave of the virus. During my visit I met community leaders who embraced the challenge of getting their friends, family, and neighbours prepared.

The success of the preparations in Cowessess and hundreds of other communities just like it is due to the collaboration between the federal government and first nations. Many small communities were hit by the virus during the first wave, and the lessons learned during the first outbreak enhanced our preparations for the second wave.

Within three days of the approval of the vaccine, teams of health care workers flew to remote communities to vaccinate everyone who wanted to be vaccinated. The response was very high. Clearly, our message regarding the importance and safety of the vaccine had been effectively communicated.

I also signed a communications protocol with the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs, Chuck Strahl, and the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Shawn Atleo. That protocol was and continues to be a commitment to share information with first nations in a timely way.

Our first initiative under that protocol was to host a virtual summit to share important information about H1N1.

Preparations for the second wave in first nations were guided by annex B of the Canadian pandemic influenza plan, which had been adjusted to incorporate lessons learned during the first wave.

While flu activity has levelled off in some parts of the country, we continue to roll out our vaccine, inform Canadians, and remain vigilant in the event of a third wave of the H1N1 virus. We'll also continue the process of broadening our pandemic planning and make specific plans on how we will deal with future health concerns. This has been the first real test of our Canadian pandemic influenza plan, and, as I mentioned earlier, our biggest vaccination program.

While the H1N1 virus has dominated the health agenda since April, the other business of the health portfolio has kept moving forward.

With your cooperation we have passed Bill C-32, the Cracking Down on Tobacco Marketing Aimed at Youth Act. This legislation will protect children from tobacco marketing practices designed to entice young people to smoke. As well, by the banning of flavours and additives and by instituting minimum package sizes, the appeal of these products to children and youth is greatly reduced.

Bill C-6, the Canada Consumer Product Safety Act, is now before the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology. In fact, senators are engaged in clause-by-clause consideration of this bill right now, as I speak to you. The proposed legislation would better protect Canadian families from dangerous consumer products. It would allow for much needed product recalls and mandatory reporting. In short, it will give the government the necessary tools to act in a timely and consistent manner to protect Canadians against unsafe consumer products. This is so important, particularly at this time of year when many parents are shopping for Christmas gifts. Parents need to know that the gifts they put under their Christmas trees are safe for their children.

I applaud this committee for recognizing the importance of this long overdue bill and for its timely yet diligent scrutiny of Bill C-6. I urge the Senate to follow suit and pass the legislation without delay. I hope they will be inspired by my encouragements today.

Another major issue for the health portfolio has been the global shortage of medical isotopes since the shutdown of the reactor at Chalk River. The impact of the shortage has been managed here in Canada because the lessons learned during the shutdown at Chalk River were used to develop contingency plans. These plans are now helping medical staff cope with the shortage.

The research for alternatives and the methods of dealing with the shortage had been well under way long before Chalk River went down. We have been able to cope with the shortage through cooperation with the provinces and the territories. The impact of the shortage has been mitigated by the hard work and dedication of the nuclear medicine community. With alternative solutions, however, patients ultimately receive the diagnostic scans they need.

In 2009 we also took actions to strengthen Canada's food safety system. In partnership with the Minister of Agrigulture, Gerry Ritz, I announced that the government will invest $75 million in Canada's food safety system in response to the recommendations made by independent investigator Sheila Weatherill. Those new investments will improve our ability to prevent, detect, and respond to future outbreaks of foodborne illness. The investments will mean expanded listeria testing, more inspectors, and better surveillance and communication. In the months ahead we must remain vigilant and adapt quickly.

Thank you for providing me with this opportunity to address you today. My experience as federal Minister of Health has been extremely rewarding. I have been given the opportunity to travel and meet with Canadians from across the country. I work with intelligent, determined, and thoughtful individuals who have the same care for the well-being of Canadians that I do. It is truly a privilege to be here on their behalf.

Thank you.

Criminal Code

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Madam Speaker, in my career as a criminal lawyer, my most important client was always the one in front of me, whom I had to defend before the court. It is worth repeating: justice issues are very important. I do not mean to denigrate the work of other members, because I respect what they do, but this work is very important because it gives people their freedom. We must give this the attention it deserves.

As a parliamentarian and a lawyer, when someone forgets—I was going to use another word, but I will avoid it so as to avoid a point of order—deliberately or not, to hand over documents or to give us the information we need to make decisions, I take exception to that. In fact, I think I should take exception more often.

Bills C-52, C-42, C-36, C-31 and C-32 need to be studied immediately. Should they be studied quickly? No, we will take our time and give them the careful consideration they deserve, as we should and as we are expected to do. Then we will see.

For now, the issue that concerns me is Bill C-36. In my opinion, we must take time to give it the consideration it deserves. The Conservatives must stop forgetting to give us the documents needed to study this bill.

[Daniel Demers]

I agree with you. All parliamentarians are of the same view that this has to be stopped, and I just want to thank you very much for passing Bill C-32 unanimously by the House. It is a great piece of legislation.

We have been talking to aboriginal groups. We have been talking to our colleagues in the United States. Quite frankly, it takes political will, but it also takes solutions that don't require going on reserve for enforcement. We've provided in our brief some recommendations on how to go about doing that. The first step is in fact to meet with the Americans and encourage them to take the responsibility of border security from their side more seriously and implement some tax measures, and also to look at the supply of tobacco and related inputs into the creation of cigarettes.

We have provided recommendations that don't require going to reserves, and we'd also encourage the government to work with the Americans and encourage them to live up to their responsibilities on border security because most of these cigarettes are coming in from the States.

Flavour Gone Campaign

[Greg Rickford, Conservative, Kenora, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this government delivered on its promise with the royal assent of Bill C-32, criminalizing the manufacturing and retail of sweet additives to all tobacco products.

Bill C-32 is about our youth. The youth-led Flavour Gone campaign was the real champion behind this bill as flavoured tobacco is widely viewed as a major reason kids get hooked on tobacco. Constituents from the great Kenora riding played a key role in the Flavour Gone campaign.

Sam McKibbon and Caitlin Bousfield from Dryden and peer leader Catherine Kiewning from Red Lake were instrumental in raising national awareness, including by testifying at the health committee, that it was time to butt out flavoured tobacco products.

I puffed on Popeye candy cigarettes as a child, and still today one can buy gum and candy in packages that resemble those of tobacco products. There is still more work to be done, but Bill C-32 is a major step forward. We applaud Canada's youth, who made tobacco companies' plans for sweet-flavoured tobacco go up in smoke.

Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak again on this matter.

Before I came to this House, I was a member of the Durham Regional Police Services Board. When I was there, I had the opportunity obviously on a regular basis to talk with officers around the changing technologies and the fact that our laws simply had not kept pace. People were committing fraud online or hiding behind anonymity on Internet service providers and performing serious crimes, and the police simply could not follow them.

I was first elected in 2004 and when I came to Parliament, I was pleased to support the work of the then Liberal government to create what was the modernization of investigative techniques act. That bill which was introduced in 2005 is ostensibly what is before the House today in both bills, Bill C-46 and Bill C-47, which is now being debated. Unfortunately, in 2005 the Conservatives precipitated an election and that killed the bill.

The member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine then reintroduced that as a private member's bill in the next session and again that bill was killed when the Prime Minister walked to the Governor General's office and then killed that legislation.

In this session of Parliament that same Liberal member of Parliament introduced that Liberal legislation yet again. We had to wait until the end of the last session before the Conservatives finally introduced it.

As I said, just before we began question period, it is a little rich to me that the Conservatives would be going on about the imperative need to pass the bill and how much it is needed for police and how critical it is when they in fact have had four years to introduce it and are the ones responsible for killing it in various stages at various moments in time.

When they finally did introduce it, they introduced it in the last week the House was sitting before summer when there was no opportunity to debate it, there was no opportunity to move it forward. Now, it has been left until the end of October before we are finally dealing with the bill.

It shows that the Conservatives' commitment to the bill is fragile at best. In fact, we have seen what they do on criminal justice matters. They introduce bills and let them languish on the order paper. Then they wait for a scandal or a problem to hit and then they seek refuge in those same crime bills, suddenly bringing them back with great urgency saying they need to be dealt with immediately and any opposition party that dares to ask a question on them is somehow soft on crime.

The facts do not measure up. The facts are that they have allowed these things to languish for years and something that should have been dealt with, the Liberal legislation that was introduced so long ago, has meant that those people are committing online fraud and the police officers who need those additional investigative techniques and tools have been left without them as the government has completely failed them.

I think it is important to note as well that this is not the only area where we have seen this problem with the government. I spoke a great deal yesterday about the importance of these new investigative techniques for police. My intention is not today to repeat all of those comments but to make a comment more generally on the direction the Conservatives are heading on crime.

Today, in the public safety and national security committee we had a couple of different witnesses. One of the witnesses was Dr. Craig Jones who is the executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada. His insights into the direction in which the government is heading on crime I think is very telling. I will quote from his comments today. He said at the beginning of his statement:

My second audience is the future. I suffer no illusions that I will be able to alter the course of this government’s crime agenda--which legislative components contradict evidence, logic, effectiveness, justice and humanity. The government has repeatedly signalled that its crime agenda will not be influenced by evidence of what does and does not actually reduce crime and create safer communities.

What we heard as well from Mr. Stewart along with Michael Jackson, who wrote a report about the government's broken direction on corrections and crime, is that we are walking down the same road that the Americans embarked on in the early 1980s, when Republicans came forward and presented the same type of one-type solution for crime, which is incarceration, more incarceration and only incarceration.

If we did not have that example and the example that was in the United Kingdom, perhaps the Conservatives would be forgiven for thinking that would work. The reality of the United States is that this is a catastrophic disaster. In fact, the governor of California is now saying the state is being crushed under the weight of the mistake of these decisions, that the prisons are literally overflowing. The supreme court of California had to release thousands of offenders into the streets because the prisons simply had no room for them.

We also see that these prisons become crime factories. Minor criminals go in often for drug-related crimes, break and enters or smaller but still serious crimes, but instead of getting help for the addiction or mental health issues they face, they get sent into prison environments where they learn to be much worse criminals. We could make the analogy of putting in a butter knife and getting out a machine gun.

In fact, in committee today the director of the John Howard Society quoted an individual who deals with aboriginal inmates and said that our prison systems are turning into “gladiator schools”. He stated:

So our federal prisons have become “gladiator schools” where we train young men in the art of extreme violence or where we warehouse mentally ill people. All of this was foreseeable by anyone who cared to examine the historical experience of alcohol prohibition, but since we refuse to learn from history we are condemned to repeat it.

Everyone can imagine that as we continually overpopulate these prisons and do not provide the services to rehabilitate people, it has to come out somewhere. Where it comes out is in a system that continually degenerates.

In California the rate of recidivism, the rate at which people reoffend, is now 70%. Imagine that, 7 out of every 10 criminals who go into that system come out and reoffend, and those offences are often more serious than the ones they went in for first. In other words, people are going into the system and then coming out much worse.

We have to remember that even when we increase sentences, over 90% of offenders will get out. We can extend the length of time they are staying in there, but at a certain time they are going to get out, and it is the concern of anybody who wants a safe country or community that when people come out of these facilities, they come out ready to be reintegrated, to contribute to society and not reoffend.

The other fundamental problem with the Conservative approach to crime is that it waits for victims. Conservatives think the only way to deal with crime is to wait until somebody has been victimized and a crime has occurred, and then to punish the person.

Of course, we believe in serious sentences. We have to have serious sentences for serious crimes, but that is not nearly enough. If it were enough, if simply having tough sentences were enough to stop crime, then places like Detroit, Houston and Los Angeles would be the safest cities in North America. We know that is certainly not the case.

What the Conservatives are doing is slashing crime prevention budgets. Actual spending in crime prevention has been slashed by more than 50% since the Conservatives came into power. They have cut programs.

I have gone to communities like Summerside and talked to the Boys and Girls Clubs or the Salvation Army in different communities. They said they have either lost funding for community projects to help youth at risk or, instead of being given the power to decide how to stop crime in their own communities, they are prescribed solutions from on high in Ottawa, which is disconnected and often does not work in those local communities.

The net result is that the community, which has the greatest capacity to stop crime, has its ability removed of stopping that crime from happening in the first place, which means even more people go to these prisons, continually feeding this factory of crime the Conservatives are marching forward with.

When we look at the costs of all of this, not only does it not provide a benefit, not only does it make our communities less safe, as has been proven in the United States, but there is a staggering cost to these policies. Pursuing a failed Republican agenda on crime that not even the Republicans would subscribe to any more in most states and most quarters in the United States comes with a staggering cost.

The Conservatives are refusing to release those figures. The minister has been refusing to tell us what exactly the price tag is for all of these measures they are putting on the table. That is why I have asked the Parliamentary Budget Officer to take a look at all of these measures and their approach on crime, and tell us just what the cost is.

That bears some important questions to be asked. Where are the Conservatives going to get the money to build these new super prisons that they are talking about? Where are they going to get the money to house all of these additional inmates? Presumably, they would provide programs and services to make these inmates better. Where is that money going to come from?

If the example in the United States is any evidence, or if the example of the Conservatives' own action in slashing crime prevention budgets is any example, then we know that they will cut from the very things that stop crime from happening in the first place. Imagine the irony of that. To pay for prisons, they are going to cut the very things that stop people from going to prison. It is a backward philosophy under any logic. Upon examination of more than a minute or two, one would recognize that it is a recipe for disaster.

If that were not bad enough, and I think that it speaks directly to this bill, the Conservatives have also betrayed police. I have talked with the Canadian Police Association about the government's commitment to put 2,500 new officers on the street. That association has called that broken promise a betrayal. However, we also know that, with respect to the RCMP, the Prime Minister went out to Vancouver where he made a solemn commitment to RCMP officers that they would get the same wage as other police officers and that they would receive parity with other police officers.

Right after making that promise and signing a contract, he ripped that contract up and broke the promise. Worse, as if that was not enough of an insult to the men and women who are our national police force, the government then challenged in court the right of RCMP officers to have the choice of whether or not they wanted to have collective bargaining. The government decided to challenge a right that is enjoyed by every other police force in the country.

At the same time, the government has ignored call after call by public inquiry after public inquiry for proper and adequate oversight. The reports and conclusions of Justice Iacobucci and Justice O'Connor made it clear that new oversight mechanisms were critical to ensure that public confidence remained in our national security institutions and our national police force, yet the government ignored it. In this example, it ignored for four years Liberal legislation that had been put forward to give officers the tools that they needed to do the job of keeping our communities safe.

In all of this, the government's response is to skew the Liberal record and be dishonest about what exactly Liberals have done on crime. Here is an inconvenient fact that it does not like to talk about. For every year the Liberal government was in power, crime rates went down. Every single year that we were in power, Canada became a safer place. The communities were safer and that is because we took a balanced approach to crime.

However, the government also says that we have blocked its crime bills. That is incredibly disingenuous. Here is the reality. Maybe I will go over a couple of bills just from this session. These are bills that the Liberal Patry not only supported but moved to accelerate and tried to find a way to get passed as expediently as possible in the House.

The government caused an election, so it killed all of its own bill. When it brought back Bill C-2, it included Bill C-10, Bill C-32, Bill C-35, Bill C-27 and Bill C-22, all of which we supported. We supported and looked to accelerate Bill C-14, Bill C-15, Bill C-25 and C-26.

That is the record of Liberals in this session of Parliament on crime, not to mention the Liberal record of reducing crime every year that we were in office previously.

Today I was doing an Atlantic radio talk show with a Conservative member of Parliament who ascribed the motive to the Liberal Party that we did not care about crime, that we are soft on criminals, and that we like to let people get away with things. I will say one thing about the Conservatives. I think that they believe what they say. I think that they honestly believe that these policies will work, even though they have failed. Even though Republicans have tried them and they have been utter disasters, I do believe that the Conservatives think they will work.

However, to ascribe motive to this side of the House and to say that we somehow care less about the safety of our communities is disingenuous. To say that I care less about the safety of my children, family or community is unacceptable. This debate needs to be about who has the best approach to crime.

I would suggest that we have the best approach to stop crime before it happens, to build safe communities, to ensure we strike the right balance between being tough on those who commit serious crimes, but, most important, working with every ounce of our bodies to ensure those who begin to turn down dark paths have people who step in and intervene to ensure they do not commit those crimes in the first place. That is the type of approach we advocate on crime and it is one that I am proud of.

Investigative Powers for the 21st Century Act

[Mark Holland, Liberal, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Madam Speaker, I find that comment by the member opposite very curious. I will start my comments by saying that I think he has forgotten who caused the last election. It was in fact the Prime Minister who walked over to the Governor General's residence and precipitated the last election, therefore killing every bill on the order paper, including a bill dealing with this very matter which was introduced by the Liberal member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine. I find the member's comment curious that he is blaming the frequency of elections, every single one of which the Conservatives precipitated in the last two instances, and using that as an excuse for why this was not adopted.

A point that bears mentioning is that in 2005 the Liberal Party introduced the modernization of investigative techniques act, which is essentially the same bill that we are working with here today. With very minor modifications, it is essentially the same legislation, so why would it take four years essentially to deal with the same bill that we had written so many years ago?

The member talked about things like voice over Internet protocol in terms of changes to Internet service provisions. All of those things were present four years ago when that work was done, yet the government refused to introduce it. Even recently, when this was brought back, the decision that was made by the government was to bring it in at the end of the last session. It was in the last week immediately leading up to the summer recess when suddenly this was a priority put on the order paper. It languished there for months and months and now the government is bringing it back. And the Conservatives have the audacity to try to talk about us delaying bills. The Conservatives themselves have had their crime bills sitting on the order paper, not only for months but in some instances for years, only to bring them back when they are a hit politically.

What they do is when there is a scandal, the most recent one being the cheque scandal, they decide to resurrect their crime bills that they have been ignoring for months on end. Suddenly it is an imperative national priority to deal with whatever particular crime bill they put on the table at that particular moment, when we all know that the real objective is to change the political channel away from whatever political troubles they are having. In this particular instance, it is the cheque fiasco. As this bill has been ignored and ignored and left to languish and we have been calling again and again for it to be dealt with, we can know that is essentially what their strategy is.

Now they have come to this bill and said that it is important to deal with it but only after we have been pushing for it for four years. I hope something does not distract them and we do not find this bill suddenly being lost yet again.

It is important to mention that the bill we have been advocating for the last four years is badly needed by police. Technology has changed and evolved in many different ways. While criminals have evolved with it, our legislation simply has not. For the last number of years while the Conservatives have been sitting on this, whether the criminals are involved in cyber fraud or are using technology like BlackBerries in the commission of crimes, to which the police cannot get access, the criminals have had a huge advantage against the law enforcement agencies.

One of the areas in which they have had a great advantage is in their anonymity. People are able to do things on line and police are not able to uncover who exactly they are, even if they know they are committing acts of a criminal nature. Police have been calling on us for years to change that and only now are the Conservatives bringing something forward to do something about it.

I have had many conversations with police, not just about things that were mentioned by the hon. member, but about other things, such as child pornography. Obviously child pornography is a deep concern and we want to root that out and give police every tool to be able to go after those individuals. I have also spoken with the police about instances where a criminal is known to have a particular phone and his whereabouts cannot be ascertained. The police want to be able to use the GPS tracking device in that device in order to figure out where the individual is. The current laws do not allow the police to do that.

I was talking to the chief of police in Calgary who was expressing deep frustration at the number of dial-a-dope operations. Individuals are using cell phones almost like a pizza service to deliver drugs to people's doors. When the police find these cell phones they are unable to access them because of the encryption software. The maker of the device is under no obligation to help open it up to reveal all of the phone numbers and the client base. It is a crime that is almost impossible to catch someone doing because it is locked behind that wall of encryption. That has been going on for years and the Conservatives have been refusing to give the police the tools they need to deal with it, even though solutions are present.

At the same time, it is important to mention that one of the things we are going to have to look at and study in committee is to ensure that there is balance. A number of people have expressed concerns that a law of this nature could be misused to allow access into people's searching history and people's personal messages or could be used maliciously by somebody to gain access to people's Internet search records and history. We have to ensure that balance exists. We have to protect individual rights to protect people's freedom to do what they want without somebody being able to go through willy-nilly, without warrant, their information. At the same time, we have to provide police with the opportunities to chase those individuals who we have reasonable grounds to believe have committed a crime.

It is worth mentioning as we talk about this bill, that the Conservative approach to crime is, I think, in general, disingenuous. We listened all day today to speeches by members about how the Liberal Party had held up a variety of bills. Of course, factually, that is entirely incorrect.

If we were to talk about the Liberal Party record in this session of Parliament in terms of bills that we have supported and helped to accelerate, I can list the following: Bill C-2, which was an omnibus bill which included provisions from Bill C-10, Bill C-32, Bill C-35, Bill C-27, and Bill C-22; Bill C-14; Bill C-15; Bill C-25; and Bill C-26. It is important to mention that in every instance we tried to get those bills accelerated and pushed forward.

That does not stop the Conservatives from talking about other parties holding up their crime bills. The problem is the facts do not match their rhetoric. In this specific instance and many others, the reality is the exact opposite of what they have said. In many instances, the Conservative crime bills have been languishing on the order paper, forgotten. They are sitting there waiting to be implemented. The Conservatives are not waiting for the right time for the public interest, not waiting for the right time to ensure there is adequate information to get the bills passed, but they are waiting for the right political moment to put the bills forward to try to turn the political channel.

If that were not bad enough, the other reality is that they are fundamentally letting down the Canadian public by only offering one solution to crime, and that solution invariably is to lock up people.

I do not have any problem with the notion of tough sentences. We have to have harsh, stiff sentences for people who commit serious crimes. However, if tough sentences were the only answer, then places like Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Detroit would be some of the safest cities in North America. In fact, we know the opposite to be true.

The reality is that places with the stiffest sentences are more often than not some of the most dangerous cities in North America. Why? The Americans are being crushed under the weight of their own correctional system. They are literally in a position where there are so many people pouring into the prisons that they cannot possibly keep up with the costs of building all of the prisons, let alone the programs and services to ensure that people do not repeat offend. In fact, in California the situation has become so bad that its rate of recidivism is now 70%. They are creating crime factories. People go in for a minor crime and come out as a major criminal. It is like putting in a butter knife and getting out a machine gun.

That is the strategy the Conservatives are trying to bring here: a failed Republican strategy in dealing with crime that we know as a fact does not work. They are trying to apply it here to change the channel, to use it as a political game changer. If they are in trouble with the cheque fiasco, they talk about locking up people longer. If they are in trouble because a minister is caught in a fiscal indiscretion, they talk about locking people up longer. That is what they do.

I think most of them, I would hope most of them, realize that it is a disastrous strategy, that it leads to less safe communities, that it leads to billions of dollars in additional costs, and that it is exactly following down the road that even Republican governors say was a huge mistake to walk down. If anyone doubts that, I will point quickly to what has happened specifically with incarceration in the United States compared with Canada.

In 1981, before the United States began a similar agenda on which the Conservatives are now embarking, locking people up longer and longer, the gap between the rate of incarceration in Canada and the U.S. was much narrower. In Canada, 91 per 100,000 people were incarcerated, while the figure in the United States was 243 for every 100,000 people.

By 2001, Canada's rate had grown only slightly in terms of the number of people who were incarcerated, to 101 incarcerated for every 100,000 people, while in the United States that rate had soared to 689 for every 100,000, a rate almost 700% higher than that in Canada. In that same period of time, Canada and the U.S. had the same decline in their overall rate of crime. Imagine that.

The United States' rate of incarceration went up 500% over ours, and yet over that same period of time we had the identical reduction in the amount of crime. The only difference was that 500% more individuals were being incarcerated per 100,000 people, and it cost billions of dollars more.

In fact, if we continue to follow this model suggested by the Conservatives and we extrapolate to the same path that the Republicans took the United States, where they put them right to the brink, we are talking about roughly $9 billion a year in additional costs to have the same rate of incarceration.

As for the difference for public safety, well, unfortunately, I wish I could say it just kept it the same, that the only impact of that was the loss of $9 billion a year, but we all know that that $9 billion a year has to come from somewhere. We have already seen where the Conservatives' priorities are on crime. Let us take a look at the crime prevention budget.

Since 2005 the crime prevention budget has been slashed by more than 50%. That is actual spending. At the same time as they are increasing sentences and chasing after a failed Republican model, the Conservatives are slashing the money that is given to crime prevention. It is crazy. Anybody who would look at it objectively would say that this is a path to disaster, and yet that is exactly the road they have decided to head down.

There are opportunities here to be smarter on crime, to listen to police, to talk to them about what the real solutions are, to invest in prevention, to invest in making sure people turn down the right path instead of the wrong one. I had the opportunity to go around with the former chief of police in Regina and see a neighbourhood which is designated as one of the most dangerous in Canada. He was able to show me a home that had no septic system, no heat and where the child in that home was going to school hungry. That same child predictably, just scant years later, could be committing his or her first crime by starting to get involved in drugs.

For more than 60% of our inmates, addiction is the root cause of the problem and yet they do not get help. They get thrown into prison and forgotten about, and they come out worse because the core problem was never addressed. In this case it would be an addiction problem that sent them there. They go in for a minor crime, usually break and enter, and they have an addiction. They go into a system that is not providing them any rehabilitation services, and they come out and commit worse crimes. So goes the cycle. It is a constant cycle of things getting continually ever worse.

When we look at our prison system and we ask where these criminals come from, not often enough do we take a hard look at that. Imagine. Sixty per cent of those in prison face addiction issues. Over 10% face serious mental health issues. Not only are our prisons turning into crime factories, but the Conservatives are trying to use them as hospitals, by sending people with serious mental health issues into prisons. The prisons are so ill-equipped to deal with them that they are putting them in solitary confinement. They are often released directly from solitary confinement into the general population, only to reoffend again. Whether it is the facilities in St. John's, Grandview or different facilities across the country, we see this time and time again.

The reality here is we have a bill that has been called for by police for years. The government is only now finally bringing it forward, after its having been on the table since 2005. It is trying to use crime as a political game changer, misrepresenting what crime is really about and how to stop it, and at the same time it is taking us down a path that has been tried and failed before in the United States.

We need to do better than this. We need to be honest on crime and offer real solutions.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Order, please. I have the honour to inform the House that a communication has been received as follows: Rideau HallOttawaOctober 8, 2009Mr. Speaker:I have the honour to inform you that the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor General of Canada, signified royal assent by written declaration to the bill listed in the schedule to this letter on the 8th day of October, 2009 at 11:51 a.m.Yours sincerely,Sheila-Marie CookThe Secretary to the Governor General and Herald Chancellor

The schedule indicates the bill assented to was Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Tobacco Act.

Bill C-32

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, on Friday, October 2, I responded to a question regarding Bill C-32, which is currently in the Senate. I said that Bill C-32 had passed the Senate with no amendments. I should have said that Bill C-32 had passed the Senate committee with no amendments.

The Economy

[Josée Verner, Conservative, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

As the Prime Minister mentioned, and in line with the government's position, Bill C-32 is a bill that seeks to protect our children. The objective has not changed.

Having said that, members from the Quebec City area are also concerned about the impact on Rothmans and we are confident that we will find a solution.

Cracking Down on Tobacco Marketing Aimed at Youth Act

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Pursuant to an order made earlier today, Bill C-32 is deemed read a third time and passed.

(Motion agreed to, bill deemed read the third time and passed)

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is clear at this point that the result of the vote on Bill C-32 is no longer a secret to anyone, because, as hon. members will have noticed during routine proceedings today, a motion was unanimously adopted in this House to pass Bill C-32 unanimously at the end of this debate, which my NDP colleague will close.

I imagine that the reason is quite simple: all the parliamentarians in this House—on the advice of the Standing Committee on Health, on which I sit with my colleague from Repentigny—decided that all the measures in Bill C-32 were in keeping with the objective of the bill, which is to place greater limitations on young people's access to cigarettes and tobacco products.

This objective is very much in line with the purpose of the Tobacco Act that was enacted in 1997 and that stipulates in paragraph 4(c) that the purpose of the act is to protect the health of young persons by restricting access to tobacco products.

We know that Bill C-32 aims essentially to eliminate any attractive packaging that resembles candy and contains a single little cigar or just a few units. In fact, the weight limit is 1.4 grams. Removing these flavoured products from circulation broadens the scope of the act to include blunt wraps.

It is important to try as much as possible to remove from circulation and make inaccessible to our young people tobacco products that could introduce them much more easily and quickly to tobacco use, which we all know is harmful to health and leads to addiction.

Of course, in a few moments, when this debate concludes, we are going to make our decision, which, as I said earlier, is a unanimous vote in favour of this bill. It will be sent to the Senate to be studied there.

It is clear, however, that our actions as parliamentarians must not stop with this bill. As we know, manufacturers have a great deal of imagination and could try to find other ways to make tobacco more appealing and more accessible to young people. We must always remain vigilant. We mentioned this and talked about it during our examination at the Standing Committee on Health. We said that the government and this Parliament must remain truly open to adding any other products that might appear or are already on the market, and for which we do not have any evidence on how appealing they are to young people.

The ISQ revealed that more than one-third of secondary students had smoked a cigarillo in the month before the survey. I think that number speaks for itself and illustrates the importance of taking action.

I was also pleased to hear my colleague from Etobicoke North describe cigarette smuggling as a scourge and say that it encourages our young people to use tobacco products.

Indeed, according to the statistics I found by doing a little research, 200 illegal cigarettes can be purchased for about $6. What young person today does not have $6 in his or her pockets? And 200 cigarettes translates into a lot of heavy smoking.

It is therefore important that we make a greater, more concerted effort to put an end to cigarette smuggling. I am pleased to have my Liberal colleague's support on this, because our work as parliamentarians should focus on finding a solution to smuggling as quickly as possible. The problem is already well entrenched and critical.

The government also loses out because of smuggling. According to the most recent figures I could find, federal and provincial governments lose $1.6 billion in tax revenues every year because of cigarette smuggling.

I would like to talk about another matter for future consideration by all my colleagues. We heard in committee from cigarillo manufacturers that stopping the production and sale of cigarillos will lead to a substantial reduction of their revenue, not that generated by sales to young people but revenue from sales to adult clients who currently smoke these products. Lost revenue translates into future job losses. Out of concern for these workers, it is our duty as parliamentarians to reflect on the impact of this legislation on those workers in the industry who may lose their jobs and consider possible assistance for them. The government should also think about this when implementing the bill.

In closing, I would like to acknowledge all witnesses who appeared before the Standing Committee on Health during the course of this study. When we have to study a bill it is important to hear from experts and also from those people who make the fight against smoking a priority every day.

It is also important, as we deal with this matter, to congratulate and acknowledge all those who have quit smoking, something I wish to highlight. By quitting they have decided to do something positive for their health and we should give them credit for that.

I would also like to thank all stakeholders, including groups of young people who, every day, try to get the message out to our youth about the harmful effects of smoking and urge them to not start down the road to this addiction. As years go by, it becomes increasingly difficult to stop smoking. I am not speaking from experience because I have never smoked a cigarette or any other tobacco product. However, I have met many people and, in my previous speech in this House, I gave the example of Louis Lemieux.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to follow my hon. colleague in speaking to Bill C-32, as I believe it is vitally important to curb tobacco use among children.

Most smokers begin smoking in childhood or early adolescence. Ninety per cent smoke before the age of 18. Early starters are more likely to become addicted daily smokers. Partly because the tobacco industry targets adolescence, 82,000 to 99,000 young people start smoking every day.

Tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, 60 of them known or suspected carcinogens, such as arsenic, DDT and methanol. Cigarette smoke is directly linked to an increased risk of many diseases, including cancer, heart disease and even sexual impotence. In fact, 30% of all cancer deaths can be attributed to smoking. Cancers other than lung cancer that are limited to smoking include bladder, cervical, kidney, liver, pancreatic and stomach cancer.

Even light smokers risk their health. For example, a 2005 British Medical Journal study showed that smoking only one to four cigarettes per day was associated with a significantly higher risk of dying from heart disease. According to the World Health Organization, smoking accounts for one in ten deaths worldwide. As a result, Gro Harlem Brundtland, former director general of the organization, repeatedly and angrily spoke out against the tobacco epidemic, “Civilized nations protect their people under 18—they do not let them play around with a product which statistically kills one out of two of its permanent users”.

The Standing Committee on Health did work collegially and heard testimony from anti-smoking groups to small business owners to the tobacco industry. Much of the questioning focused on contraband tobacco, smokeless products and menthol flavouring and whether more work needed to be done in these areas.

We have a crisis in Canada, namely contraband tobacco, which lacks government control, inspection, taxation, is cheap and is easily bought by youth. Research tells us that the price of cigarettes is an important factor in determining whether young people begin to smoke, whether current smokers continue and how much they smoke. We know low cost contraband cigarettes are particularly attractive to vulnerable populations such as young people. Lab analysis of contraband shows that dead flies, insect eggs, mould and even human feces have appeared in contraband cigarettes.

Our children are smoking contraband cigarettes in disturbing numbers, 25% of youth in Ontario and 32% of youth in Quebec. Dave Bryans, president of the National Coalition Against Contraband Tobacco, reports:

We've got the wild west of illegal tobacco manufacturing and distribution right under our noses and most Canadians don't know it's happening.

The reality is that trade in cigarettes undermines prevention and smoking cessation strategies.

In a 2009 example from Hamilton, Hamilton's public health department and the Canadian Cancer Society blame the jump on easy access to contraband and tax-free cigarettes that sell for a fraction of the regular price. Smoking increased by a third in one year. Public Health estimates that contraband cigarettes cost $8 to $15 compared with the usual $55 to $80.

A last point regarding contraband tobacco is that while it may rob government of enormous tax revenue, at least $1.6 billion each year, it is statistically likely to kill one in two of the youth it sucks in.

While contraband is growing in popularity among youth, so too is smokeless tobacco, better known as chew, snuff or spit tobacco. Spitless tobacco is a cleaner, friendlier version of chewing tobacco, developed in an effort to convince more smokers to consider using smokeless products in places where smoking is prohibited.

Regardless of the name or form, smokeless tobacco causes serious health problems. Chewing tobacco hooks users on nicotine, similar to the way cigarettes do, and makes it difficult to stop using chewing tobacco. Over time, users develop a tolerance for nicotine and need more tobacco to feel the desired effects of the drug. Some switch to brands with higher nicotine content or use tobacco more frequently and longer.

Severely addicted users may leave the chew in their mouths overnight and swallow the tobacco juices. Smokeless tobacco causes gum disease to tooth decay because it contains high amounts of sugar as well as coarse particles that can scratch away tooth enamel, making teeth more vulnerable to cavities.

More seriously, smokeless tobacco increases blood pressure and heart rate, and may increase the risk of heart attack. Smokeless products also increase the risk of developing small white precancerous patches inside the mouth where the chew is most often placed or worse, oral cancer, including those of the cheek, gums, lip, mouth, throat and tongue. Surgery to remove cancer from any of these areas can leave the chin, face, jaw or neck disfigured.

Smokeless is not harmless. Joe Garagiola, a former spit tobacco user, played major league baseball and later worked in broadcasting. He reported:

I chewed tobacco because it seemed to be the thing to do if you were playing baseball. Everybody chewed when I was playing, and nobody knew the dangers of it.

He has since become a crusader against smokeless products because he lost three close friends to oral cancer. He said:

You won't die of gum disease or yellow teeth, but develop oral cancer and it's a terrible way to go. Here you are with oral cancer from using spit tobacco, your jaw has been removed and you have to eat through a tube. You die one piece at a time. Spit tobacco is a horrible, horrible thing. I just wish I could get this message across to everyone.

Today, more than 600 additives including caramel, cocoa, coffee extract, vanilla and menthol can legally be added to tobacco products.

Many appear to be present simply to add flavour, but some may have more sinister effects. For example, cocoa when burned in a cigarette produces bromine gas that dilates the airways of the lung and increases the body's ability to absorb nicotine.

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health explored tobacco industry manipulation of menthol levels in specific brands and found a deliberate strategy to recruit and addict young smokers by adjusting menthol to create a milder experience for the first time user. Menthol masks the harshness and irritation of cigarettes allowing delivery of an effective dose of nicotine. These milder products were then marketed to the youngest potential consumers.

Howard Koh, professor and associate dean for public health practice said, “For decades, the tobacco industry has carefully manipulated menthol content not only to lure youth but also to lock in lifelong adult customers”.

We know that younger smokers use menthol at higher levels. About 44% of current smokers, age 12 to 17, have tried menthol. That compares to 31% with older smokers.

To be fair, a spokesperson for Philip Morris said:

We disagree with the author's conclusion that menthol levels in our products were manipulated to gain market share among adolescents...The company's various brands, including our menthol brands, are designed to meet the diverse taste preferences of adults who smoke. We believe kids should not use tobacco and our marketing methods are designed to minimise reach to unintended audiences--

Regardless, there are significant knowledge gaps regarding menthol: the role of menthol in tobacco reinforcement and addiction; the relationship between menthol cigarettes and cancer of various sites; the effect of menthol cigarettes on cardiovascular disease; and the association between use of menthol and illicit drugs.

Importantly, this year there will be a second scientific conference on menthol cigarettes.

In closing, Bill CC-32 is important and necessary. I am encouraged that it is receiving strong support from anti-smoking and health groups. Rob Cunningham, senior policy analyst at the Canadian Cancer Society, said, “We're hopeful that MPs will adopt this bill quickly. It's a very important gain for us”.

Going forward, however, we have to close the loop on contraband tobacco. This may mean looking at the Criminal Code as 49% of cigarettes smoked in Canada are contraband. We also need to look at smokeless tobacco and menthol cigarettes.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak once again in support of Bill C-32, an act that would bring important changes to our tobacco legislation.

By now members of the House should be aware of the urgent need to update the laws governing the marketing of tobacco products. The changes in Bill C-32, appropriately titled “cracking down on tobacco marketing aimed at youth act”, are needed in order to protect our children and youth from the dangers of tobacco use.

The reason is simple. A vast majority of adult smokers became addicted when they were in their teens. We know that if someone has not started smoking by the age of 19, it is unlikely that individual will ever become a lifelong smoker.

The current legislation allows tobacco advertising in publications that can spill over to youth. The proposed amendments in Bill C-32 will put an end to this practice.

We know that overwhelmingly the publications that carry tobacco ads are free publications. Many of these are found at bus stops, on street corners and malls. This makes them easily available to teens and children. We also know there was a 400% increase in the number of ads that appeared in the beginning of 2009 when compared to the same period of 2008.

We all want to protect our young people from advertising that might entice them to try smoking and potentially become addicted to a product that has many serious consequences for their health.

Following the last amendments to the Tobacco Act over a decade ago, there was a lull in advertising by the tobacco industry, but that has changed over the last two years. We have seen a new wave of advertising and this practice must end now.

The proposed amendments in Bill C-32 will eliminate potential spillover from tobacco advertising to children and youth, but Bill C-32 does not stop there. It will also make tobacco products less appealing to young people and less affordable too.

In 2007 more than 400 million little cigars, also known as cigarillos, were sold in Canada. Many of those were flavoured to taste like tropical punch, chocolate cherries and a host of other flavours that would appeal to a young person. I have a young family, and my son is 15 years old. These products look like markers, they look like toys, they look like anything but a tobacco product.

Flavoured sheets or tubes made from tobacco known as blunt wraps are also flavoured and marketed to young people and sold individually for as little as $1 or in low price kiddie packs. Tobacco is not candy and there is no good reason to make it taste like something other than what it is. Our proposed legislation will make it illegal to add flavours to cigarillos, cigarettes and tobacco wrappers known as blunts.

Another factor that encourages young people to try smoking is the price of the products. If a tobacco product is inexpensive, more young people are likely to try it. For that reason, the proposed legislation will require that cigarillos and blunts be sold in packages containing a minimum of 20 units. This will increase the cost of these tobacco products and make them less accessible for our young people. We eliminated the sale of individual cigarettes or cigarettes in kiddie packs a long time ago. It is time that the same rules apply to cigarillos and blunts.

All of these changes would help protect our children from marketing practices designed to entice them into smoking. By amending the Tobacco Act, we can help prevent more young people from experimenting with an addictive substance. We can protect them from laying the foundation for a possible lifelong addiction, with potentially serious health consequences.

Through this proposed legislation, we are taking a tougher stand against tobacco products that are packaged, priced and flavoured to appeal directly to young people.

Tobacco is a killer. Some 37,000 Canadians die every year from illnesses related to tobacco. It is linked to lung cancer, emphysema and cardiovascular disease, to name but three. The negative effect of the health of those people has been an affect on all health care. Smoking costs the health care system over $4 billion every year.

Sales of little cigars nearly quadrupled between 2001 and 2007, making them the fastest growing tobacco product on the market. Who is buying them? Health Canada's Canadian tobacco use monitoring survey gives us this insight.

In 2007, 25% of youth aged 15 to 17 reported having tried smoking a little cigar at some point in their lives and over 8% said they had smoked one some time in the 30 days before the survey. These results confirm that there is reason for concern and we need to take action. I would like to remind the House that the proposed legislation does not seek to get rid of little cigars altogether, but we do want to put a stop to the marketing of them to youth, whether that is through price, flavouring or advertising.

In closing, I would like to thank members of the Standing Committee on Health for their thoughtful and timely consideration of this very important legislation. I would like to acknowledge the efforts of the hon. member for Winnipeg North and all the important work she has done to raise awareness of the dangers that candy-flavoured tobacco products pose to our country's young people.

All of my colleagues on the health committee have done a wonderful job with this legislation. I thank the stakeholders, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Health for their support. I found this a great experience and an example of working co-operatively, not in a partisan way, especially on an issue that is very important to all of us here as parents, which is the health of our children. It is an example of how committees should work.

I hope the bill gets a very speedy passage through the Senate.

[Steven Fletcher, Conservative, Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, MB]

moved that Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Tobacco Act, be read the third time and passed.

Health

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fourth report of the Standing Committee on Health in relation to Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Tobacco Act. The committee examined the bill and has decided to report it with amendments, and has ordered its reprint.

I wish to especially thank all members of the health committee for all their hard work, dedication and co-operation.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

This one is fairly lengthy. I believe everybody has a handout.

The intent of the schedule of Bill C-32 is to ban the use of additives, including flavours that make cigarettes, little cigars, and blunts more attractive to youth. The schedule is not intended to prohibit the functional ingredients that are required for the manufacturing of the products.

After talking to industry about the technical requirements of the bill, we were told that restrictions would change the look and the feasibility of making their product. For example, the changes make it technically difficult for them to use existing cigarette papers, and filter paper would no longer be able to look like cork. This amendment will fix the technical requirements without compromising the intent of the bill.

I would move to propose that Bill C-32 in the schedule be amended as per the text provided to the clerk and circulated to the committee.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

With all due respect, Mr. Glover, I have to disagree completely with you about the government's quickness to act on the contraband trade. The government has literally been dragging its heels on this matter. It does not want to act. We have proposed a number of measures to assess the extent of the contraband problem as well as more proactive steps to eradicate the problem. You are correct in saying that this is not the aim of the bill. I'm getting to the bill, but I did want to clarify our differences of opinion with regard to this subject.

A number of witnesses have called into question the different studies done in advance of Bill C-32. From your testimony I take it that you have complete confidence in the validity of your studies.

Can you be more specific about the process used to determine that young people are major consumers of the products slated to be taken off the market?

[Luc Dumulong]

On behalf of our 11,000 Canadian customers and retailers and our employees, thank you for having us here today and for allowing us this opportunity to share with you our concerns about Bill C-32 .

Distribution G.V.A. is a small business established in 1997 which employs approximately 80 Canadians in Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador. We distribute more than 1,000 different tobacco products, including high quality cigars like the Davidoff brand, as well as cigarillos and pipes and accessories to more than 10,000 retail outlets.

We are an important importer and distributor for convenience stores, tobacco shops and duty-free boutiques. Over 10,000 retail outlets in Canada are serviced by our organization and we remit in excess of $20 million a year in tobacco taxes.

Distribution GVA Inc. is a responsible corporate citizen and a major importer and distributor of cigars. It is essential that the Canadian government is aware that Distribution GVA has never, ever promoted any of its flavoured tobacco products to minors.

We are aware of the fact that tobacco products are health risks and that these products are not destined to be consumed by individuals who are not old enough to buy the products legally. The consumers of our products are adults, and we are opposed to the fact that minors are able to obtain access thereto.

TheMinister of Health has announced that her government intends to establish a prohibition regime on all flavoured tobacco products through Bill C-32. If the said bill is adopted in its present version, this will result in the layoff of the majority of our employees and may even force the closure of our company.

Bill C-32, while perhaps well-intentioned, is needlessly too wide in its scope in its present version, due to Health Canada's elemental lack of knowledge with respect to cigar products. Bill C-32 will prohibit products that have been on the market for decades.

I have brought some products to show you what kinds of products will be banned with this bill. They are clearly not kids' products. These have been on the market for about 25 years. Some of these are little cigarillos made in Europe, and they have also been on the market for the longest time. They have flavours and they're enjoyed by adults. These will all be banned if the bill is passed as is. I have more. I can show you more.

Anyway, I'll continue. I think you have pictures of these products in annex 1.

The latest statistics demonstrate clearly that flavoured cigarillos are products that are destined for adults and consumed by adults. According to the results of the latest Canadian tobacco use monitoring survey, cycle 1, which Mr. Martial was talking about earlier, conducted by Health Canada and Statistics Canada, 91% of the flavoured cigarillo consumers are adults or are of age for buying the product. Sixty per cent of those people are over 25 years old. So saying that these are kids' products is not very true.

These findings raise an important question. Before passing this legislation and imposing a prohibition on an entire legitimate category of tobacco products, it is important to discover the manner in which the remaining 8 or 9% of consumers who are not adults obtain access to these products.

For example, according to Health Canada, access to cigarettes through the contraband tobacco market is much greater than access to flavoured cigarillos. Unfortunately, we fear that because of the speed with which the Government intends to adopt the present law, this important question will remain unanswered and will unnecessarily penalize the thousands of individuals who are employed in the legal tobacco trade.

What the Statistics Canada survey demonstrates is that the flavoured category did not actually create more smokers per se, but actual smokers switched from cigarettes to flavoured cigarillos. We have also noted that a large majority of flavoured cigarillo consumers were originally cigarette smokers who have switched to our products, for multiple reasons.

From conversations with some of these consumers, we have learned that they prefer our product to the cigarettes they used to smoke. In many instances, these consumers were in the process of reducing their tobacco consumption with the use of our products. They told us they smoked less when they smoked flavoured cigarillos than they did when they smoked cigarettes. Some have also told us that they were trying to quite smoking, and that since they smoked less of these, it was a way to reduce their consumption and eventually quit smoking. I am not the one saying this; the consumers of our products are saying this.

We cannot understand, then, the urgency to adopt Bill C-32 in its present form and why the government is finding it okay to create such an emergency to proceed on something that represents one-half of 1% of the total tobacco market in Canada, while at the same time making an exception for menthol cigarettes. According to the health minister, they're marginal, and this is why they're making an exception, but they're at 2%. So one-half of 1% is not okay, but 2% is okay?

One can easily deduce that the 400 million cigarillos market will be claimed by the big tobacco manufacturers. Are the big tobacco multinationals behind this bad piece of legislation? Have the anti-tobacco lobbyists been shamelessly manipulated by big tobacco?

Health Canada has mentioned to a representative--and Mr. Martial talked about it earlier--that they have no intention of undertaking any unnecessary research. That supports the desire to introduce a complete prohibition on a whole category of tobacco products that, in some cases, have been on the market for 25 years, as I've said. At the present time, the government is essentially asking Canadians to allow it to prohibit a complete category of products without supporting such a measure with the proper research.

However, such legislation will have direct and wide-ranging consequences on the financial security of thousands of Canadians and will ensure an increase in tobacco contraband for these products. Accessibility to minors will also be increased through the tobacco contraband channel, because they are never asked for proof of age.

Furthermore, in its present format, Bill C-32 will come to unquestionably cause, not solve, problems of criminality already well documented in our society. In effect, once we put aside the emotion associated with the debate concerning minors, flavoured tobacco products, and the issue of tobacco consumption, the prohibitions proposed by the Government will not address the problems associated with minors' access to tobacco products. The illicit contraband trade in tobacco presently offers—

Let me show you what you can now find on the market, in schoolyards and just about everywhere: plastic Ziplock bags containing 200 flavoured cigarillos.

Canada Consumer Product Safety Act

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member brings forward a question that we heard several times during consultations in committee.

The bill works with ignition issues, as far as papers, with tobacco, but one of the things we learned in committee was that tobacco was governed under an entirely different act. It is a very unique product and because the government has a specific act for it, it was felt by the majority of committee members that it should be dealt with in this separate act.

The member may be aware of the co-operation we see in committee right now with An Act to amend the Tobacco Act, as far as banning tobacco products that are geared toward children. We had some great presentations yesterday. I think he would agree with me that we are moving forward in tobacco control. With the changes we are putting forward, this will again make Canada a leader in the world.

I look forward to the co-operation of the NDP, like the great co-operation of the critic in putting forth her ideas in improving the Tobacco Act.

[Neil Collishaw]

We would like to thank the person who promised us such legislation, the Prime Minister. We are grateful to the staff in his office for their work to ensure the progress of Bill C-32. We greatly appreciate all your efforts.

Thank you.

Now I'd like to pass to my colleague, Mr. McKibbon.

[Neil Collishaw]

Thank you.

According to the WHO, tobacco use is a pandemic that is unequalled in history. Last century, the use of tobacco killed 100 million people. In the 21st century, it will kill 1 billion people unless we end this epidemic. It will not be an easy task. We need an ongoing series of measures to restrict tobacco use, such as those found in Bill C-32. Taken together, these measures are proving to be very effective to reduce the use of tobacco.

We applaud this bill, and we have only one improvement to suggest to you. We suggest that the ban on the use of flavourings be expanded to include smokeless tobacco like this product here. You can find a draft amendment that would do so in your information kits.

Why are we making this suggestion? Here a few reasons provided by two dental surgeons from Northern Ontario, Dr. Pynn and Dr. Dowhos of Thunder Bay, in their letter to the committee. Here is the quote:

More than fifty percent of our patients are of Aboriginal origin with the majority of this population using tobacco products. ... Tobacco has no boundaries when it comes to its effects on the oral cavity.

Dental decay and gum disease caused by tobacco usage, including smokeless tobacco (also called chew and spit), are leading reasons why we are so busy with tooth extractions. Not only are we extracting single or multiple teeth, but we also regularly have the unfortunate task of performing full mouth clearances of all 32 teeth because of tooth rot from poor oral hygiene and decay.

Prolonged usage of products such as smokeless tobacco can also cause life-threatening oral cancers. Oral cancer can have a horrific and disfiguring consequence, as the majority of the surgical interventions for its treatment require parts of the jaw to be completely removed.

Our youth do not recognize that the instant pleasure they may receive from chewing smokeless tobacco can have devastating effects later, thus we also need to ban the use of flavourings to smokeless tobacco products before it is too late.

In a few minutes my colleague from Dryden, Ontario, Mr. Sam McKibbon, will explain just exactly how he and many of his friends in northwestern Ontario and many other places in northern and western Canada are being seduced by the lure of flavoured, smokeless tobacco.

Mr. McKibbon was one of the creators of the “Flavour...GONE!” campaign. Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada are proud to have provided more both moral and financial support to this campaign, and we are proud to have Mr. McKibbon here speaking on our behalf today.

Before I turn it over to him, I still have one important duty to fulfil. I would like to thank all of you. For 18 months, we have been asking parliamentarians to amend the act in order to protect our youth from the tobacco companies' tricks, in particular adding all kinds of tempting flavours to encourage our kids to start using tobacco. The fact that Parliament has introduced not one but two bills to deal with this problem bears witness to the serious attention that our elected officials have given to this issue.

We are particularly grateful to Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis and her staff for the introduction of private members' bills in two successive parliaments to draw attention to this issue and for the strong support shown by her and her staff to the “Flavour...GONE!” campaign. We are similarly grateful to the Hon. Leona Aglukkaq and her staff for the initiative shown to bring forward Bill C-32 as a government bill and the parliamentary craft involved in shepherding it through all stages of consideration.

We are also grateful for her initiative in seeking the support of Ms. Judy Wasylycia-Leis and to the latter for so graciously offering such support.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to thank our witnesses for coming.

I appreciated the questions that my colleague, Ms. Murray, asked about smuggling cigarettes. You were saying that as a general rule, young people were beginning with the cigarillos before they really began smoking. I have to tell you that I myself saw many of these young kids who began smoking these little cigars. Although I support Bill C-32—I even defended it in the House of Commons—you must realize that flavoured cigarillos are legal in the united States.

To some extent, my question follows up on Ms. Murray's remarks. Don't you fear that smuggling will rise if they just prohibit these small flavoured cigars without taking any practical measures? Because young people have no difficulty travelling several kilometres to get boxes of these little cigars at less than $10 per box.

Extension of Sitting Hours

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to move the following motion. I move:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 27(1), except for Friday, June 12 and Friday, June 19, 2009, commencing on Wednesday, June 10, 2009 and concluding on Tuesday, June 23, 2009, the House shall continue to sit until 10 p.m.

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by stating what might be obvious to folks who watch the proceedings of Parliament closely. By and large, I would have to say that this session of Parliament has been quite amicable and cooperative. I appreciate the efforts by the opposition to help the government get its agenda through Parliament.

As I recently said at a fundraising event for the Children's Bridge Foundation, I was reflecting on this place and reflected that this truly is the house of the common people. I also reflected on that word “common”. I thought that during the time of a minority Parliament, it is important for all of us to reflect on what we have in common: the things that we share as legislators regardless of our partisan differences. Regardless of what it is we want to see for Canada, I do believe very sincerely that all legislators and parliamentarians have the best interests of the country at heart.

I think that it is important that we try to work on those things that we have in common. I believe that there have been many instances in the last five or six months in this place when we have done that. I want to begin my remarks by commending the opposition for oftentimes trying to look beyond partisan differences, look to what we have in common, and actually accomplish things for the people of Canada.

While I am pleased with the progress that we have made thus far, not only as a government but as a Parliament working collectively, there is much more that we can accomplish for Canadians. As I have been saying about this cooperative atmosphere that is sometimes prevalent here, I think that some people who watch the daily proceedings of the House of Commons would actually dispute that.

If one were to watch the 45-minute question period every day, one might be surprised to hear me say that we actually work cooperatively and quite well together. While question period serves an important purpose and is the main focus for the media, no acts are amended, no new laws are created, and no funds for important programs are approved during that period of time.

Today, for example, there are 285 minutes dedicated for government legislation and 60 minutes for private members' business. Lots of time and effort goes into these minutes each day. More importantly, they can also be productive minutes. Thus far this session, our House has passed some 25 bills, including Bill C-33, which restores war veterans allowances to Allied veterans and their families. This required all-party consent and we all agreed that this was in the best interests of not only our veterans but the country.

Bill C-14, our bill to fight organized crime, is currently before committee in the other place. Bill C-29, the agricultural loans bill, will guarantee an estimated $1 billion in loans over the next five years to Canadian farm families and cooperatives. This is all important legislation that we worked together on to further it along the parliamentary agenda.

Our Standing Orders include a specific provision for the extension of sitting hours during the last two sitting weeks in June. In fact, I reflect on my 16 years in this place. It has often been a point of confusion when members, and especially rookie members, look at the calendar and see the last couple of weeks with asterisks beside the dates. They think that those weeks are disposable somehow, but they are not. They are that way because the government has the right to serve, without notice, the motion that I am moving today to extend hours and work into the evening.

At this point in my remarks, I also want to inject the fact that up until quite recently in parliamentary history, the House of Commons sat into the evening for debate almost every night. It has been a relatively new phenomenon that we do not have evening sittings. The only exceptions to that in the recent Parliaments have been for emergency debates or take note debates. Other than that, we do not usually sit in the evenings. It is quite a new phenomenon.

What I am moving today is not something unusual. These rules provide a mechanism to advance government business before members leave Ottawa to work in their constituencies over the summer.

We have a lot of important work to do before the House rises for the summer. After we subtract the three days for opposition supply days and the time for private members' business, we only have 33 hours and 45 minutes remaining to complete our government business before the House rises on the evening of June 23.

Extending the House sitting hours over the next two weeks would allow us to make progress on government bills, such as: Bill C-26, legislation to tackle property theft, which we expect to receive back from the justice committee this week; Bill C-34, the protecting victims from sexual offenders act, which would strengthen the national sex offender registry to provide the police with more effective tools to protect children from sexual predators; Bill C-35, the justice for victims of terrorism act; Bill C-36, which would repeal the faint hope clause in the Criminal Code so that criminals who commit first or second degree murder will no longer be able to apply for early parole; and Bill C-6, the consumer products safety bill, which was reported from committee yesterday. Adopting this bill would protect the health and safety of Canadians by allowing the recall of unsafe consumer products. I urge members to adopt that bill with the utmost speed when we call it for debate later this week.

Other bills we would like to make progress on include: Bill C-32, which cracks down on tobacco marketing aimed at youth, which received unanimous support at second reading and we hope that health committee can report the bill back shortly so that the House can consider its passage before the summer; and Bill C-23, the Colombia free trade bill.

While not unanimous, I am grateful for the support of most members opposite in enabling the House to pass Bill C-24, the Peru free trade bill. Both Bill C-24 and Bill C-23 would expand market access for Canadian companies at a difficult time. I inject that this is especially important to our farmers who will have new marketing opportunities open up for them because of these two free trade bills.

This is just some of the important work to be done on our government's commitments. It does not take into account additional new legislation that we continue to introduce every week.

I notice the justice minister is sitting here and nodding as I relay a number of justice bills. The Minister of Justice has been extremely active in bringing forward a succession of important justice reforms. This is one of the reasons that I ran for Parliament 16 years ago. I know many legislators on both sides of the House hold near and dear to their hearts the importance of protecting victims and their families and of reforming and changing the justice system in our country to ensure that criminals are held accountable for their actions.

My intent regarding this period of extension would be, and I have discussed this with the opposition House leaders and whips, to set a goal each day as to what we wanted to accomplish. When we accomplished that goal, we would adjourn for the day. Even though the motion says that we would sit until 10 o'clock Monday to Thursday, it may not be necessary to sit until 10. We could work co-operatively and collectively together. If we actually achieved our goals that day at 7 o'clock or 7:20 p.m., we would see the clock at 10 and the House would rise. I think that is reasonable.

I am asking for a simple management tool to maximize our progress with the weeks that are left, a little over two weeks. I am not asking for a shortcut. I am not asking to curtail debate. I am proposing that we work a little harder to get the job done. As I said, I believe I am making a reasonable approach of adjourning each day after we meet modest goals. All parties would agree to these goals. This is not a blank cheque. I cannot adjourn the House without support from the opposition, nor can I prevent an adjournment motion from being adopted without opposition support. The motion has co-operation built right into it.

Sitting late in June is part of the normal process, as I referred to earlier. It is one of the procedures required to make Parliament work and be more efficient. According to the Annotated Standing Orders of the House of Commons:

Although this Standing Order dates back only to 1982, it reflects a long-standing practice which, in its variations, has existed since Confederation. The practice has meant that in virtually every session since 1867, in the days leading up to prorogation or, more recently, to the summer adjournment, the House has arranged for longer hours of sitting in order to complete or advance the business still pending.

A motion pursuant to Standing Order 27 has only been refused once and that was last year. Even under the minority government of Paul Martin, the motion had sufficient opposition support to be adopted. There is bound to be some business that one opposition party wants to avoid, but generally there should be enough interest on the part of the opposition to get legislation passed before the summer recess.

The House leader of the official opposition is often on his feet after question period trying to get speedy passage to some of our justice bills. Here is a chance for him, and collectively Parliament, to actually get that done.

The NDP members complain that we accuse them of delaying legislation when all they want to do, or so they say, is put up a few more speakers to a bill. Here again we are giving them the opportunity to do exactly that.

I am therefore seeking the support of all members to extend our sitting hours so that we can complete work on important bills which will address the concerns of Canadians before we adjourn for the summer.

Tobacco Act

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Tobacco Act. Even though we on this side of the House support the legislation in principle, I am disturbed by its implications. Despite the government's assertions, the bill does nothing to protect the rights of the child, especially those children under 18 years of age.

I will like to quote from the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which states that:

States Parties shall ensure that the institutions, services and facilities responsible for the care or protection of children shall conform with the standards established by competent authorities, particularly in the areas of safety, health, in the number and suitability of their staff, as well as competent supervision.

The government is not upholding its obligations under that convention when, as my colleague from St. Paul's, Ontario point out yesterday in responding to a question, that rolling back the taxes increases the buying power of cigarettes for children, which is what the government has done. If we do not want children and youth to be a target of the tobacco industry, we must not decrease the taxes on cigarettes. What we have done with the decrease of taxes on tobacco has taken $12 billion out of the treasury.

I would like to say a few words about a phenomenon which has not, to my knowledge, been addressed sufficiently by my colleagues, although two or three of them have just spoken of it. I want to speak of the extent of the role of smuggling in the trade and sale of tobacco products.

The Canadian government's decision on smuggling is not the best one. The 1999 report by the World Bank makes the point that even when there is a considerable amount of contraband, higher taxes increase government revenues and reduce smoking. Price hikes encourage smokers to quit, stop others from starting, and reduce the number of former smokers who start up again.

It is also difficult to understand the statement by the Minister of National Revenue reported in the Gazette on April 2, 2009. According to him, the federal government has issued 14 permits to Quebec companies out of a total of 38 across Canada, or 37%. This is in marked contradiction with the stated objective of the government to protect children and youth from the tobacco industry's marketing tactics.

Moreover, 11 of these cigarette manufacturers are located on the Mohawk reserve, where organized crime seems to have infiltrated the tobacco industry. Clearly, contraband is a growth industry. I am not the only one who says so. Other members from other parties have talked about this. It seems to me that it is more prevalent in Quebec than in the other provinces, because the members from the other provinces have not talked about it.

It is estimated that 30% to 40% of the cigarettes sold in Quebec are contraband. The shortfall for the province is in the order of $300 million. Although the government clearly does not have the means at present to effectively monitor the industry and make sure that manufacturers comply with their licences, which would require them to collect taxes on what is sold, this bill will not prevent children and young people from being able to buy tobacco from the lucrative illegal industry. The bill is weak and ineffective, even though it prohibits the packaging, importation for sale, distribution and sale of little cigars and blunt wraps unless they are in a package that contains at least 20 little cigars or blunt wraps.

According to a letter I received from Casa Cubana/Spike Marks Inc. of Montreal dated May 26, 2009, it said: “The government's proposed ban will not in the least address minors' access to tobacco issues. As importantly, the government's proposal will come to further fuel the contraband trade in tobacco by providing exclusive market rights to these products to Native manufacturers and criminal groups”.

The illegal industry will find a way to circumvent the laws if the kind of public education demanded under article 42 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is to make the convention widely known to adults and children, is not carried out. Article 44.6 of the convention also requires Canada to make the reports on child rights widely available to the public and to have the public actively engage in children's rights.

For example, 71% of Canadians who participated in an Ipsos Reid study undertaken for Save the Children Canada in 2004, only five short years ago, gave Canada a C or lower in fulfilling its obligations to improve the lives of Canadian children. At the same time, only 33% of adults who were interviewed answered questions accurately when it came to Canadian children living with HIV, in poverty, with abuse or other social conditions as a result of the increasing marginalization of their parents.

The government has not only failed in its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to educate the public but it is also derelict in those obligations by failing to put in place the necessary legislative policies with effective monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to curb the lucrative contraband trade.

Here is what is fascinating about this entire approach. According to Luc Martial of Casa Cubana, he was surprised to learn during his meeting with Health Canada officials that the government had little or no actual relevant research on flavoured tobacco products, their market or the industry.

More precisely, Health Canada had no comprehensive understanding as to who exactly is consuming these products; what products are actually being consumed: little cigars or cigarillos, plain or flavoured and in what quantities and frequencies; where and how these products are actually being accessed, whether through friends, family, peers, legal channels or contraband; why consumers were beginning to access these products as opposed to other traditional cigars or cigarettes; and how the use of flavours actually impacts a consumer's decision to start or continue smoking. That seems to be an extremely important point, considering what other colleagues have said earlier.

I find all of that strange to understand because, according to the Canadian Cancer Society's website, findings from a 2006-07 youth smoking survey released on June 23, 2008, and funded by Health Canada, say:

--teenagers in Grades 10-12 use cigars and cigarillos the most. Thirty-five per cent said they had tried cigars, cigarillos and little cigars (39.5% were boys and 30% were girls), while 48% had tried cigarettes.

The Cancer Society's press release says:

Teenagers are very vulnerable to trying tobacco products. There is a risk that cigarillos, which can be just as addictive as cigarettes, could be a starter product for kids who would never start smoking.

The press release also says:

Cigarillos can be cheaper to buy than cigarettes because they come in smaller quantities and are easier to obtain because they are not regulated in the same way.

It would appear that the Conservative Minister of Health, even though she might fund surveys or, and I am giving her a lot of credit here, know what her own department's reports indicate, sales have grown in cigarillos over the last five years. There is obviously no plan in place to protect the most vulnerable. In 2001 about 50,000 cigarillos were sold and 80 million were sold in 2006. What an increase.

What a disaster for our youth. The Canadian Cancer Society also says that the steady decline in smoking observed in recent years among young Canadians aged 10 to 14, in grades 5 to 9, could very well have stopped.

The blame lies squarely on the shoulders of this government. The Conservatives' actions have led to an increase in the risk of mouth, throat, larynx, lung and esophagus cancer.

When will the government shoulder its responsibilities by putting policies and practices where they are really needed?

I support this bill even though it is weak and ineffective. I support it because I recommend referring this bill to committee so that the members can make the necessary amendments to it and turn it into a bill that really addresses the situation facing our young people.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Rather, a paltry $5,000. We want to increase it to $5 million. I believe $5 million should be the minimum. Perhaps we could make it more than that.

This is impossible if all the stakeholders work independently. The federal government absolutely must coordinate the effort of the various organizations and departments because only one concerted effort will be able to address all the different aspects of tobacco addiction: prevention, education or even repressive measures against suppliers of contraband.

As I have said, there must be an overall approach to smoking. We cannot just go after the tobacco smugglers or raise the price of cigarettes. We really must have a concerted overall approach to all stakeholders to ensure that there are prevention activities in the schools, to go after the smugglers, and to use even more vigorous advertising to discourage young people from starting to smoke.

Mainly, we must try to discourage these manufacturers of harmful, dangerous products from advertising them with attractive campaigns to woo young smokers. They encourage young people to “try it, just a little”. They smoke a cigarillo or two, and the next thing they know they are smokers for life.

Finally, the Bloc Québécois believes that all measures focused on contraband cigarettes and cigarette smuggling on the reserves must be taken in conjunction with the aboriginal authorities. Cooperation in this area is vital, in order to identify and target the criminal organizations.

The purpose of Bill C-32 is a praiseworthy one: to discourage young people from smoking by limiting the availability of tobacco products and reducing the types of products available. The bill is also intended to correct some of the present shortcomings of the Tobacco Act, particularly the exception that permits tobacco advertising in publications with an adult readership of not less than 85%. This has led to the situation of such ads being placed in free newspapers or magazines that are readily accessible to young people.

To draw a parallel with what I was just saying a few minutes ago—and I will be brief because I am getting the one minute sign—I want to address the fact that young people are allowed to smoke in the school yard. So there are really some major shortcomings in the Tobacco Act and a concerted effort is needed to try and reduce smoking among young people. That is why the Bloc Québécois supports Bill C-32, despite the presence of certain points that perhaps need looking at in committee. We—my colleague from Verchères—Les Patriotes, who has done an excellent job on the Standing Committee on Health, and I—will make it our duty to try to wipe out tobacco addiction among young people.

[Nicolas Dufour, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Madam Speaker, before anything else, I would like to congratulate my colleague from the Liberal Party on his fine speech.

I will pick up on his final comment, that indeed any campaign against smoking encompasses not just a battle against cigarettes but also an overall approach to the causes of tobacco addiction. A large part of this will involve education. Major advances have already been made on the educational level to raise public awareness, among young people in particular, in order to make sure they do not start smoking at that age, and then be stuck with it for the rest of their lives. There is therefore far more to be done than just to take concrete actions on today's smokers or the tobacco companies. There is also the whole educational approach to the diet and physical fitness of our young people, long before any direct attack on cigarettes.

The Bloc Québécois is in principle in favour of Bill C-32, although it is not of great use to Quebec, where the Government of Quebec has already enacted stricter control over cigarillos. I would like to take just a minute to show you that, once again, Quebec has been proactive rather than reactive like the federal government. Quebec has had an anti-smoking strategy for ages. For about three years now, there has been legislation in place banning smoking in bars and restaurants. Before that, there were segregated areas. but now smoking in public places is completely banned.

I must admit that this measure has made considerable strides toward reducing smoking, because smokers really have nowhere left to smoke except at home and outside. Even outside, it has to be nine metres away from a building. So it can be seen that Quebec has already taken great steps toward reducing smoking. Now too, corner stores have to store cigarettes in a closed cabinet so that young people who come into the store are not attracted by the packages of cigarettes.

I would like to come back to cigarillos. There is a problem: young people are smoking more and more, and start with cigarillos before gradually making the move to cigarettes. As my colleague said earlier, although tobacco companies are legitimate—we have nothing against the companies themselves—I have a problem with their ethics when they launch a vigorous marketing campaign targeted at young people and the most vulnerable people in society.

As a member of the Standing Committee on Health, I have heard from a huge number of representatives from anti-tobacco lobbies, including Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, which the Liberal member is very familiar with. This group showed us the new packaging and tobacco products. I must admit that it is very scary. I am not afraid of the box itself, but of the way things are being done. There are advertisements with bright colours targeted directly at young people. Tobacco companies are trying to make it attractive and get young people interested in smoking. Everyone knows that the products in cigarettes and cigarillos are extremely toxic and addictive. They will make young people want to smoke. That is what is so great about their strategy. I am being sarcastic, of course.

Young people start with a little cigarette or cigarillo. The companies try to encourage them to buy just one or two. They make small packages of five cigarillos so that young people buy only a package, and thus do not consider themselves real smokers. Unfortunately, they start with a small package of five cigarillos, which gradually leads them to cigarettes, and maybe even worse. We can see that these companies have a marketing strategy to find young people on high school grounds or in CEGEPs, so that they gradually develop a dependence on cigarettes or cigarillos, and eventually become smokers—heavy smokers at that.

In spite of everything, the number of smokers has gone down over the years. My colleague to my left stopped smoking three months ago, and I want to congratulate him, because it is a very brave thing to do. He deserves a round of applause. He has tried to stop smoking for three months, and I encourage him to keep at it.

The number of smokers is going down from one year to the next. We have come a long way since the 1950s, when physicians said that cigarettes were good for your health and had studies to back their claims. I do not know whether hon. members remember this. Unfortunately, I had not yet been born in 1950, but the cigarette companies, with the help of the medical profession, sold their products without too much difficulty. People still did not know about all the problems cigarettes caused. Education has played a prominent role in the decrease in the smoking rate.

It is therefore important to raise awareness, especially among children. Public awareness of the harmful effects of cigarette smoking has caused this huge decrease from one year to the next. Certainly, there is still a lot of work to be done, but the bill is a step in the right direction and a way to continue bringing down the number of smokers.

Needless to say, there are some things missing from the bill. First, it should have more teeth, particularly to combat contraband cigarettes. I will come back to this. Bill C-32 lacks teeth, but it is a step in the right direction, and we will be able to study it in the Standing Committee on Health, which is what I am going to do, and do thoroughly, have no fear.

Reworking this bill in committee will give us the chance to make certain amendments so that the bill has more teeth. Of course, we will have to consult groups such as Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada to find out what sort of amendments they would like to see made to this bill.

The Bloc Québécois believes that cigarillos and all other tobacco products should be subject to the same prohibitions as cigarettes. Efforts to reduce the visibility and consumption of cigarettes must not be thwarted by the emergence of other equally harmful products.

The Bloc Québécois is asking that, as for cigarettes, it be prohibited to advertise tobacco products to children under 18, that all products display warnings about the dangers of smoking and that these products be hidden from public view.

As I was rereading my notes to prepare for the debate on Bill C-32, I got to thinking about the little labels on cigarette packages that show pictures of gingivitis and say that smoking too many cigarettes can cause impotence. Those messages turn young people off of smoking. Of course, we still have a lot to do.

It would be unfortunate if some young people began to ignore these messages because they have seen them over and over. We will have to work hard to educate them. We also have to make sure that cigarillo packages carry the same messages as cigarette packages. That is extremely important. We have to show young people that cigarillos are just as dangerous as cigarettes.

Unfortunately, young people tend to replace one with the other, and it would be really unfortunate if cigarillo packaging did not have to follow the same rules as cigarette packaging. That is covered in part in Bill C-32.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Bill C-32 will not put an end to tobacco use among minors, as I said earlier, and that tougher measures, particularly with respect to contraband cigarettes, will have to be enforced to minimize minors' access to illegal tobacco products.

Not so very long ago, I was in high school and at CEGEP. At the time, I was not a smoker. I was stunned to see 15 and 16 year olds smoking on high school property without a care in the world. On the one hand, we prohibit the sale of tobacco products to minors, but on the other, we let them smoke on public property in full view of everyone else. That was a major contradiction. But it is not the only contradiction we will ever see. As I was saying earlier to my colleagues, democracy is all about managing contradictions.

The Bloc Québécois is calling on the federal government to use every legal means possible to put an end to the explosion of smuggling, including for example, seizing smugglers' vehicles. Quebec has had many problems with cigarette smuggling. Many of the cigarettes sold to our young people, and some not so young, do not come from legal sources, but rather are smuggled. If we raise taxes on cigarettes, the sale of legal cigarettes will go down and smuggling activities will increase. Since smuggled cigarettes will be cheaper, there will be much greater demand for them. That is the law of supply and demand. So if we raise the taxes on packs of cigarettes too much and do nothing else, this will have a completely negative effect, since smuggling will increase.

The government must take decisive action and ensure that cigarette smuggling is eradicated in very specific regions of Quebec and Canada. That is the problem, since we know where the smugglers are. We know who they are, but unfortunately, it seems as though there is some sort of political fear around taking steps to limit cigarette smuggling. Until something is done, there will always be problems with tobacco. We can do all the publicity campaigns and educating we like, but if one day we reach the critical point at which we cannot get the rate of smokers below 20%, then we will have to implement other strategies, such as eradicating smuggling rings, as I was saying earlier.

At the same time, we believe that although police action is crucial, certain regulations must also be amended in order to discourage smugglers. That is key. Eliminating the source, the supplier, is still the best way to prevent smuggling.

My very honourable colleague from Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, a former minister of public safety, did extraordinary work with respect to both cigarette and drug smuggling. At the time, the Parti Québécois government—which was not afraid to assume its responsibilities—took concrete action to eliminate these smugglers. He sent the police and enacted extraordinary measures in an attempt to eliminate networks of cigarette smugglers that were often criminal organizations. To tell the truth, they are all criminal organizations.

The following are some of the measures that should be implemented: prohibit unlicensed manufacturers from purchasing raw materials and equipment used to manufacture cigarettes; revoke tobacco licences from manufacturers who break the law; establish an effective marking system for cigarette packages—a marking and tracing system—that would allow for close monitoring of tobacco deliveries; and lobby the U.S. government to shut down illegal manufacturers located on the American side of the border. This is not just a Canadian problem.

We can pass the best laws in Canada to prevent the sale of cigarettes and cigarillos to youth and to attempt to prevent cigarette smuggling but it will still be futile if the American government does not help us out with our tobacco control strategy. It is extremely difficult to wage this war against these criminals all by oneself. I am not afraid to call them that because they are poisoning our youth.

We would like to see the fee for a federal licence to manufacture tobacco products raised to a minimum of $5 million, rather than the paltry $5,000 required today.

Madam Speaker, do you not think it is ridiculous that licences are only $5,000? Some colleagues are telling me that they are convinced that you believe it is ridiculous that these licences cost only $5,000.

Any one of us here and perhaps even most of those watching on television could afford it. Between you and me, this amount is a pittance for tobacco companies, which make billions of dollars in profit every year. It is a paltry $5 million.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-32, which is a very important piece of legislation, particularly as it affects public health.

What is Bill C-32? This enactment amends the Tobacco Act to provide additional protection for youth from tobacco marketing. It repeals the exemption that permits tobacco advertising in publications with an adult readership of not less than 85%. It prohibits the packaging, importation for sale, distribution and sale of little cigars and blunt wraps unless they are in a package that contains at least 20. It also prohibits the manufacture and sale of cigarettes, little cigars and blunt wraps that contain the additives set out in a new schedule to that act as well as the packaging of those products in a manner that suggests they contain a prohibited additive.

This is a really important piece of legislation, and I have a particular bias on this.

When we look at legislation affecting tobacco, the first thing we have to accept is that tobacco has no redeeming qualities. One could argue that for people who smoke the taste is a redeeming quality, but there are no redeeming qualities. It is dangerous, it is addictive and it shortens life.

Tobacco abuse is sometimes compared to alcohol abuse, but there are some significant differences. One difference is that alcohol can be used responsibly in moderation. Some research even indicates that there are health benefits to certain types of alcohol. We often hear about red wine. Even the beer distributors have evidence indicating that beer used in moderation can be helpful. It has not helped me very much, but I accept the argument. Whether one believes it or not, it can be argued that alcohol does not automatically shorten life. Of course the abuse of alcohol can have dramatic impacts: early death, drinking under the influence, et cetera. But we have laws that pertain in those circumstances.

Tobacco has no health benefits. It is very important that we ensure young Canadians do not fall into this trap and become addicted to tobacco. The bill is important for that reason, and for me it has a historical importance as well. From 1991 to 2004, I was very involved as a volunteer with the Heart and Stroke Foundation in Nova Scotia and in Canada. I was the president of the Heart and Stroke Foundation in Nova Scotia for three or four years, and I served on the national board for a number of years.

I had the opportunity to work with some great health advocates who worked very hard in the anti-tobacco strategies. Joan Fraser was a mentor to me in Nova Scotia, and Jane Farquharson was a pioneer in healthy living. Mary Elizabeth Harriman, who works with the Heart and Stroke Foundation nationally, and is now the executive vice-president, was involved in health promotion when I worked with her on a number of these issues. Sally Brown is now the executive director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation and she has been for a number of years. People in Nova Scotia, like Tanya Willis, Rollie Jameson, Grant Morash, George Buckell, are business leaders who became presidents of the Heart and Stroke Foundation and advocated for many issues, including but not specifically restricted to the battle against tobacco.

The Heart and Stroke Foundation has done a great deal of work on the anti-tobacco strategy. The key was when the organizations with a common interest in promoting healthy living, particularly as it pertained to tobacco but also on other things like obesity and other issues, started working together. The health charities round table in Canada had great success. They have done a lot of great work. We know the work that the Canadian Cancer Society, the Canadian Lung Association, Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, the CMA and other organizations do. Those organizations have been active on this for a long time.

We have come a long way in the battle against tobacco, but it was not always easy. I can recall 30 years ago that my now mother-in-law told people that if they were going to smoke in her house they should leave. That was radical in those days. People thought she was crazy. They thought she was hypersensitive to tobacco smoke to actually ask someone to leave her house to smoke. That was only three decades ago. They thought it was just an inconvenience. They did not understand the health detriment of second-hand smoke. That is not that many years ago.

We have come a long way, but it has not always been easy. At times success came incrementally, in small steps, and the tobacco advocates, who were well financed and well resourced, fought back every step of the way. But success has come to some degree. It has not come all the way, but it has come, and we have reduced the incidence of smoking. It has taken a lot of hard work.

I can recall a time, probably about 10 years or so ago, when the Liberal government of the day was cracking down on tobacco companies being able to sponsor events. The tobacco companies, to their credit, were very involved in things like the artistic community.

I remember arriving at my office one day and receiving calls from two organizations with which I was involved. One was from the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Nova Scotia asking if I would write a letter encouraging the government, in the piece of legislation that it was pursuing, so that tobacco companies could not sponsor events and take advantage of that sponsorship to leverage people to become addicted to smoking. That was fine.

I was also on the board of Neptune Theatre, probably the finest theatre company in Canada, with the possible exception of Eastern Front Theatre in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and perhaps the St. Peters Playhouse. The one in Charlottetown is not half bad, I must say, thanks to Anne of Green Gables and a number of other fine productions.

When I was on the board of Neptune Theatre I was asked to write a letter opposing the legislation because Neptune Theatre was the beneficiary, largely of du Maurier but other companies that provided sponsorship. It was a difficult position. Tobacco companies knew that governments had been reducing their role in the artistic and cultural communities and that they had an opportunity. To their credit, they stepped in.

I wrote the letter for the Heart & Stroke Foundation, which was the right thing to do. The Heart & Stroke Foundation has been a great advocate on a number of things.

We have had discussions in the House on things like trans fats. The Heart & Stroke Foundation has led on Health Check, where it identifies products that are healthy for people and puts a check mark on them so that when people go to grocery stores they will know what is healthy and what is not because consumers still have an awful lot of trouble identifying what is actually good for them and do not understand all the ramifications and differences in products, such as polyunsaturates, trans fats and everything else.

My bias on this bill is the work that I did with the Heart & Stroke Foundation and the people I met, including the many people who had become addicted to tobacco. Quite honestly, in my parents' generation it was a pretty easy thing to do. It seemed everybody smoked and, before they knew it, they were hooked on tobacco. Thank heaven, today my own children face probably more pressure if they do smoke than if they do not, although there are some areas where that is not always the case.

We have had great champions in Nova Scotia. I recall Ron Stewart, who was the minister of health in Nova Scotia in my father's government in the 1990s. He postulated at one point in time that we should not have things like the candy licorice pipes. I am sure members have had those before and probably in recent years. I have been known to enjoy them myself. However, the idea was that maybe we should not have them because it makes it easy for kids to become accustomed to pretending that they smoke and eventually they do. He was pilloried. People thought he was crazy. I think he was ahead of his time, as Ron Stewart always is.

Dave MacLean is with Heart Health Nova Scotia. I am very proud of the fact that in Nova Scotia, when I was involved in the Heart & Stroke Foundation, we had an organization that pulled together a number of advocates in public health, largely on smoking, headed by Dr. Dave MacLean, who was a champion on this issue. He is now at Simon Fraser University. Both he and his wife have teaching positions there. He was a pioneer.

Anne Cogdon in the city of Dartmouth was very involved in the healthy communities project.

Those are people who understand that people should not smoke. There was a day when people said that we were taking away their freedom. It was like seat belts and a number of other things but there is a role for the state in ensuring we provide opportunities, and not dangerous ones, for all citizens, but particularly for children.

I was always proud of the fact that Nova Scotia, under the Progressive Conservative government of Dr. John Hamm, back maybe five, six or seven years ago, was the first province in Canada to have a health promotion department. I give Dr. Hamm and people like Scott Logan, who worked there, a lot of credit. They were very active in ensuring people knew the facts about smoking, gambling, alcohol abuse and a whole bunch of other issues. I am proud of the fact that Nova Scotia, under Dr. Hamm's leadership, was the first province to bring in a health promotion department.

I have had the opportunity to speak to a number of my not-for-profit friends about this bill, organizations like Heart & Stroke, the Cancer Society, the Canadian Medical Association, Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada and the Lung Association. They want this bill passed. It may not be perfect and, in fact, I would argue that it is not. A number of things need to be looked at and adapted in the health committee but we need to get this through the House, which is what people are calling for.

I would like to quote Rob Cunningham, senior policy analyst at the Canadian Cancer Society. He stated:

The Canadian Cancer Society strongly supports this bill as it will lead to fewer Canadians starting to smoke and encourage more to quit.... By working together to quickly pass this bill, federal MPs will send a clear message that the health of their constituents and all Canadians comes first. Cancer is a non-partisan issue.

Speaking of cigarillos, which I will speak to in a second, which come in fruit flavours and things like that, he says:

There is the risk that these flavoured products would be a starter product for kids who would never otherwise start smoking,

There is a concerning rate of cigarillo smoking among young Canadians. The Heart & Stroke Foundation, the aforementioned Sally Brown is doing a wonderful job with the Heart & Stroke Foundation. I am proud to say that I was part of the search committee that recommended her. She said:

Protecting children from harmful tobacco industry products such as candy-flavoured cigarillos and their associated marketing is critical to ensure that children do not get hooked on tobacco. This is crucial because long-term tobacco users, half of whom die from their tobacco use, more often than not begin their addiction in their youth. This initiative is critical to reducing the risk of heart disease and stroke.

I would also mention Paul Thomey, the chair of tobacco policy for the Canadian Lung Association, who was quoted as saying:

These are positive steps forward in the fight against tobacco. Strong measures such as these not only will protect Canada 's children from the harmful effects of smoking, but will also serve to curtail industry tactics aimed at marketing their products to the youth of this country.

The president of the CMA said, “Closing loopholes is a huge step forward in protecting our children from a deadly addiction to tobacco”. This is a very serious issue for many people.

I have spoken to my friends at the Heart & Stroke who have suggested that we should pass the bill and get it to committee and perhaps the health committee would amend the bill to address smokeless tobacco products: oral, chew, spit tobacco, et cetera. Some of these products contain flavourings that are meant to appeal to youth. We think that should be dealt with at the committee level.

Other speakers have probably referred to this, but how could we believe anything other than the fact that producers of tobacco products are trying to get children addicted to their products when chewing tobacco comes in flavours that appeal to kids? We should think about that. These are flavoured products that are meant to appeal to children and that needs to be changed.

We should think about how deliberate these strategies are, and this is for both smoking and for smokeless products. Little cigars, the cigarillos, whose sales have exploded in recent years, come in these flavours: grape, peach, tropical punch, chocolate and bubble gum. These are not the boys in the fishing camps sitting around having some bubble gum flavoured chewing tobacco that they are appealing to. These are my kids, other members' kids and grandkids and other children across the country. It is really abhorrent. They are not breaking the law right now. We need to change the law so that if they do it, they do break the law because our grandchildren are too important to the future of this country. Who are these intended for? It is pretty clear.

Bill C-32 would deal with what I think is a rotten marketing practice. We are told that more than 400 million little cigars were sold in Canada in 2007 and that must stop. The bill would deal with that. It also would deal with the practice of selling cigarillos in small quantities. That is the other thing. Flavoured products are sold in ones or twos. It is a lot easier for kids at recess or kids at lunchtime to get one or two than if they are mandated to come in a pack of 20 or more. We dealt with this with cigarettes. We cannot buy one or two cigarettes but we can buy one or two root beer flavoured cigarillos or tropical punch. This needs to be changed.

It should never be easy for children to buy tobacco. As a father, the thought of my children becoming addicted to these products is frightening. Any one of us would hope that would never be the case.

Another issue that my colleague from St. Paul's has spoken to quite passionately and very effectively to is the issue of contraband tobacco. In 2008, three billion more contraband cigars were sold than in 2007. That is $2 billion in lost government revenue. Officials estimate that 200 small cigars cost $8 to $15 and not what it should be, which is in the range of $55 to $80. That is a huge problem that needs to be dealt with. It is a huge percentage of the issue that we have to deal with here.

I now want to talk about advertising. We thought we had dealt with this issue because the law was that companies could not advertise tobacco except in publications where at least 85% of the readership were adults. However, there has been a strong resurgence of advertising recently. Who knows where a lot of these publications that carry these ads go. There is no way of knowing if children are getting them and reading them, finding them on the street or if the publications are being distributed for free. Therefore, that exemption for publications where at least 85% of the readership are adults, needs to be dealt with. We really cannot regulate the distribution of advertising in today's society.

We have made some good strides. I will read an article which states:

A recent resurgence of tobacco advertising--over 400 ads nationwide--between November 2007 and December 2008--has exposed young audiences to tobacco sales pitches.

Full colour tobacco ads have been appearing....

Between November 2007 and December 2008, tobacco companies spent approximately $4.47 million dollars to place nationwide ads....

That also would be dealt with by this bill.

We have made some great strides on the issue of dealing with tobacco and the dangers that it can cause. A lot of credit goes to organizations like the Canadian Cancer Society, the Heart & Stroke Foundation, Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, public health agencies across the country, municipal public health organizations, doctors, nurses, teachers, and many others who have brought this message forward for us. I think young people are much more aware of the dangers of smoking than they used to be, certainly more than when I was a child when it was kind of cool to smoke. I do not think that is the case any more. When I talk to my children, they do not think smoking is cool at all, and I want to keep it that way. It is good that we are headed in the right direction but it is nowhere good enough.

Good public education is in fact the key, as it always is, but so is good public policy. The government has a role in ensuring that we provide safe and healthy communities for all of us, but particularly for our children.

There have been a number of champions in this House. I think of former health ministers. like Dave Dingwall and Allan Rock, who did a lot of work on this issue. I think of my NDP colleague from Winnipeg North. I know this is an issue that she takes very seriously and it is an issue that she has championed in private member's bills. She deserves credit. I am sure she is very happy that this bill has come to pass and that she would want to get it into committee.

I also think of my colleague from St. Paul's, the former and first minister of public health in Canada, the originator of the Public Health Agency of Canada. We recognize that the Public Health Agency of Canada, when it was set up, was set up largely in reaction to the issues like SARS and was to deal with things like West Nile virus, but also that there are chronic health disease issues in Canada that are taking a huge toll on our health system and on our citizens.

The biggest issue we face in managing our health care costs today is chronic disease. Tobacco has no positive health benefits. It is designed and produced to be detrimental to health. It is highly addictive. For years, led by public health champions, Canadians have resisted the tobacco lobby and made progress against smoking. We have moved forward. Smoking is now severely restricted in public places, for example; advertising and promotion is curtailed; packaging has been legislated.

My colleague from Scarborough—Guildwood passed a private member's bill a few years ago that affected the burn rate of cigarettes. Again, he faced opposition.

Progress has come but this is now the new battle for our children. We must not allow our children to be easily led down a very dangerous path: a path of addiction to tobacco.

This bill is a very good start and I encourage all members to support the bill and get it into committee where we can make it even better.

[Luc Malo, Bloc, Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are resuming debate on Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Tobacco Act. It is important to point out the alternative title. The bill contains the following note: “This Act may be cited as the Cracking Down on Tobacco Marketing Aimed at Youth Act.”

I wanted to point that out because it is clear that, in the mind of the legislator, this bill definitely fits in with the objectives set out in the Tobacco Act of 1997. In section 4(c), it states that the purpose of the act is to protect the health of young persons by restricting access to tobacco products.

Clearly, generally speaking, tobacco is very harmful to human health, as we know. It is clear that, as a society, we want the best for our young people and our children. We want to ensure that whatever they consume things is in no way harmful to their health, their development or their growth.

Clearly, and again generally speaking, no one wants to see someone who is still growing consume products that are harmful to health. It is only natural that a society like ours creates legislation to try to ensure only the best for our young people. That is why it is important to limit the use of tobacco products by our young people.

That is precisely what we are doing by prohibiting the sale of tobacco products to minors. That is the message we are sending to all our citizens, not only to the young people themselves, of course, but also to their parents and their peers. As we know, at a certain age, young people often use tobacco products to imitate others. We see people smoking and might then be inclined to smoke as well, since one of the rituals of some groups.

However, as I was saying, we have a collective responsibility to ensure that our young people do not consume tobacco products. That is what the law tells us, by prohibiting the sale of tobacco products to minors.

Furthermore, according to a 2007 Health Canada survey, close to 85% of merchants abide by this law. Of course, we would prefer that all merchants abided by the law. That would reinforce the message we want to get across to young people, their parents and their friends of legal age, which is to discourage them from using these products.

However, it is rather clear that merchants are generally aware of their roles as responsible citizens in promoting healthy lifestyles among our young people.

An important part of Bill C-32 is to restrict the use of little cigars, or cigarillos. It is true that young people who smoke them from time to time, may not be happy to learn that flavoured cigarillos will no longer be found on the shelves. However, it is clear that in this case, we are making this change to the Tobacco Act for their own good.

It is important to note that in 2000, Health Canada determined that cigarillos contain between 67% and 200% more tar than standard cigarettes, and that unfiltered cigarillos contain twice as much nicotine. We know that these harmful substances are addictive, and it is important to restrict the use of the products by young people as much as possible. It makes me smile to think of an interview I heard at the end of last week. Louis Lemieux, a morning host on the RDI news network was having a rather candid interview with Sylvie Fréchette, spokesperson for No Tobacco Day. He spoke about his own desire to quit smoking. He was even wearing a patch during the show. During the interview, Mr. Lemieux admitted that he did not think many people enjoyed smoking, but that it was difficult for them to quit because they were addicted.

We do not want our young people to develop an addiction to tobacco products during their development in adolescence. So it is important, in accordance with paragraph 4(c) of the 1997 Tobacco Act, to try to restrict access to tobacco products for young people as much as possible.

We have some interesting statistics from the Institut de la statistique du Québec. Our young people, both boys and girls, begin smoking cigars between secondary 2 and 3, that is, grades eight and nine. About 21% to 22% smoke cigars. We tend to believe that things are the same as in an earlier time and that only boys smoke; however, girls smoke now as well and that is not what we want for them.

Exactly what is Bill C-32 trying to do? It introduces three things.

It prohibits certain types of flavouring agents used in little cigars or cigarillos. Surely everyone has seen them. The little cigars now come in cute packaging resembling a package of candy or treats in all kinds of flavours that are unusual, interesting and colourful. This bill will eliminate these flavoured tobacco products from our stores.

It also prohibits the sale of single products. Young people do not necessarily have a lot of money. They often manage on odd jobs or perhaps gifts or allowances from their parents or grandparents. They do not necessarily have the money to buy a package of 20 or 25 cigars or cigarettes. At present, these flavoured little cigars are sold individually or in packages of three, five or eight. Subclause 10(1) of the bill reads as follows:

No person shall import for sale in Canada, package, distribute or sell cigarettes, little cigars or blunt wraps except in a package that contains at least 20 cigarettes, little cigars or blunt wraps or, if a higher number is prescribed, at least the prescribed number.

From now on, it will be much harder for minors to purchase these products because the larger packages will be more expensive.

With respect to advertising, current legislation allows tobacco product manufacturers and distributors to advertise in publications that have an adult readership of 85%. It is also interesting to note that there will be some advertising restrictions because we noticed that some of these publications were being distributed free of charge and were available to everyone, including minors. These publications may have been community, culturally or socially oriented, and their content may have been of interest to young people.

It is interesting to note that, to prevent these ads from reaching minors, legislators decided to take that option away from advertisers who wanted to put tobacco advertising in such publications.

I also want to point out that the Government of Quebec did not wait. I always like to remind people that the Government of Quebec and Quebeckers generally do the responsible thing when they realize that it is in the collective best interest and in young people's best interest.

The Government of Quebec has already implemented a number of rules to limit minors' access to tobacco products. According to Quebec law, a package had to include at least 10 units of a tobacco product and had to be priced above $5. As of June 1, that went up to $10. In Quebec, tobacco products are now out of sight of consumers, so when minors go into convenience stores, they will not see tobacco products that they might be tempted to buy.

However, I want to emphasize that, if we want to win the war on tobacco use among young people, we have to be much more open in our interpretation and enforcement of the measures we want to implement. If the per-unit cost is a factor for young people, then which currently available products will they buy? They will buy contraband cigarettes.

Everyone knows these cigarettes are easy to get and inexpensive. They are not, however, monitored in any way as far as ingredients or contents are concerned. What is more, they are not monitored for their ignition potential, either. If there is no clear, effective, vigilant and concerted attack on contraband tobacco, thanks to Bill C-32, young people will no longer be able to get cigarillos or flavoured tobacco products but they will be able nonetheless to turn to other products, such as contraband cigarettes.

Any one of us can look around near a high school to look at the ground where the kids hang out and find a number of butts. We will of course find some cigarillo butts, but we will also find a lot of butts from contraband cigarettes. If the legislator's clearly stated desire is to restrict the marketing of tobacco products to young people, and their access to those products, it is vital to attack contraband tobacco products in a vigorous and clear manner.

To date we have had no clear sense that the government is firmly committed to attacking this problem. I am certain that all the stakeholders will very definitely be in favour of much stronger and more effective measures against contraband. The survival of many businesses depends on it, of course, but it is also important to remember that all governments are increasingly concerned about tax leakage due to contraband. In addition, as I said earlier, it is impossible to analyze the content of the contraband products in circulation.

Another slight contradiction in the bill concerns the flavours covered by the bill. Why are menthol products still allowed? The bill puts them in a separate category, and manufacturers will still be able to make and sell menthol products, even though products flavoured with raspberry, vanilla, cherry, wild blueberry, peach, strawberry, cinnamon, honey, black cherry and rum are prohibited. Menthol is being kept because it is apparently not a flavour young people appreciate. But how do we know which of the flavours I listed young people like better than others? In my opinion, menthol should not be excluded.

Moreover, many new products will come on the market, and the government does not even make provision for them in the current version of the bill.

This is a flaw I noticed. It will be important to know why. When cigarillos came on the market, they were not very popular at all, just like other new products, but look how popular they are now.

In conclusion, I call on my colleagues to refer this bill to committee.

The House resumed from June 2 consideration of the motion that Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Tobacco Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Gurbax Malhi, Liberal, Bramalea—Gore—Malton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, May 31 was World No Tobacco Day.

It is only fitting in light of the efforts of so many anti-smoking groups that we have this debate today on ways to prevent young people from becoming addicted to a product that kills thousands of Canadians every year.

I am proud to rise today and speak to proposed legislation that would amend the Tobacco Act and assist in protecting our young people from tobacco addictions while encouraging the tobacco industry to amend its marketing practices.

Recently I rose in this House to support a petition signed by several hundred of my constituents demanding that this Parliament take immediate action in amending the Tobacco Act. The petitioners were asking for changes to limit and restrict the marketing of tobacco products to minors.

Studies show that increased exposure to tobacco advertising has a significant impact on the decision by young people to start smoking or using tobacco products. We also know that 85% of all regular smokers started smoking before the age of 18.

It is fair to say that advertising and marketing efforts aimed at young people have been a contributor to the rising number of young people using tobacco products.

Recent research has shown us that following a reduction in tobacco advertising there has been a decrease in the number of young people who smoke. However, simply putting further restrictions on the advertising and marketing of tobacco products to young people will only go so far.

We know that tobacco use is responsible for killing approximately 37,000 Canadians every year.

The Liberal Party is supportive of this bill in principle. We believe this bill is a step in the right direction to protect Canadians, and youth in particular, from tobacco marketing.

Our position is that tobacco should not be marketed to young people and should not be advertised in any publications that could be viewed by those under 18 years of age.

We have seen an increased number of tobacco ads in daily newspapers and free entertainment weeklies that are more likely to be read by young people. We believe that prohibiting advertising in all types of magazines and newspapers, regardless of their readership, is a necessary first step.

This bill would ensure that all Canadians, and youth in particular, would not be exposed to tobacco sales pitches. The limiting of advertising is a start, but I wonder if the government has considered the other factors at work here.

For example, some of the current marketing practices include using various flavours and additives that would make tobacco products more appealing to children and youth. We are seeing a growing number of tobacco products, ranging from mini cigars to blunt wraps, sheets or tubes of tobacco, that are available in flavours like grape, cherry, peach, banana-split and even tropical punch. We are also seeing tobacco companies include various additives such as vitamins, sugar and others that taste like candy to help mask the harshness of the tobacco and make it appeal to children and youth.

We are now aware of research findings from various sources, including documents from the tobacco companies themselves that show the addition of fruit and candy flavours to tobacco products makes them more appealing to young and new users. For the tobacco industry, this dramatically increases the appeal for young people to give tobacco a try.

Young people today are aware that cigarettes and tobacco products are highly addictive, and tobacco companies know this. Therefore, they must find new and innovative ways for young people to try them, despite being aware of the dangers. By adding flavours or other additives to increase the appeal of tobacco, it would seem that the tobacco industry is trying to increase the “try factor” and increase sales.

This brings me to my next point. Recent data shows that wholesale sales of little cigars has increased from 53 million units in 2001 to 403 million units in 2007, making them the fastest growing tobacco product on the Canadian market. This is quite alarming and needs to be addressed.

The availability of little cigars and blunt wraps in single or small quantities is one of the contributing factors. Unlike cigarettes, that must be sold in packages of 20, little cigars and blunt wraps are often sold individually and priced for as little as a dollar.

It is important to regulate the industry to create minimum quantities of tobacco products, so that the opportunity to price them low and make them more available to youth is no longer an option.

Bill C-32 would amend the Tobacco Act to extend a minimum quantity provision that exists for cigarettes and apply this to little cigars and blunt wraps, requiring them to be packaged in quantities of at least 20. We agree this change would limit or end the industry practice of selling these products in single or small quantities that are often more accessible and attractive to youth.

My next point is that the bill currently fails to address the concerns of contraband tobacco, which is an important source of supply for youth who decide to start smoking or using tobacco products and acquire them through illegal channels. The primary concern is that contraband tobacco products are cheap and easily accessible, and the bill does not address this issue.

There is a direct correlation between the rise in contraband consumption and the change of government in 2006. We had a strategy in place and a multi-pronged approach to deal with the problem. It appears the government has let the rate of contraband consumption grow to almost 33% nationally, 40% in Quebec and almost 50% in Ontario.

The Liberal health critic and my colleague from Etobicoke North have made very strong statements about this issue in the past. This legislation would be effective in limiting the sale and manufacture of specific types of tobacco in Canada, but in order to effectively reduce the consumption of tobacco by children, the legislation completely misses one primary point.

Kids are not able to purchase legal product and for them to access legal products, someone else must be breaking the law. As such, the legislation will have no impact on one very real problem. It is a well established fact that most teenagers gain access to tobacco from the illegal industry.

The issue of contraband tobacco sales affects several departments including Revenue, Public Safety, Justice, Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Health, Finance and Intergovernmental Affairs.

In making amendments to the Tobacco Act, it should be noted that the bill is a reasonable starting point but must include measures that control accessibility as well as enticement through clever marketing activities.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Bramalea—Gore—Malton.

Today I rise to speak to Bill C-32, for a cause that is near and dear to me, both as a former health professor but also as a coach and judge, namely, reducing tobacco use among Canadians and particularly among our youth. Today, over 125 countries grow tobacco on four million hectares of land. The global crop is worth about $220 billion per year, with five trillion cigarettes rolling off the assembly lines annually.

Not surprisingly, tobacco consumption is increasing and it may kill over eight million people a year by 2020 in the absence of drastic controls. Tobacco smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, 60 of them known or suspected carcinogens, such as arsenic, DDT and methanol. Adults who smoke risk heart disease, lung cancer, nasal sinus cancer and respiratory disease. Even light smokers risk their health. For example, a 2005 British Medical Journal study showed that smoking only one to four cigarettes per day was associated with a significantly higher risk of dying from heart disease.

Studies show substantially higher levels of lung cancer among people who work in bars, restaurants and other smoke-filled environments. Exposure to second-hand smoke also increases the risk of breast cancer, cervical cancer, miscarriage and stroke. Children who are exposed to second-hand smoke are at an increased risk of asthma induction and exacerbation, bronchitis, low birth weight, pneumonia and sudden infant death syndrome. Over 1,000 and possibly as many as 7,800 Canadians are thought to die from second-hand smoke each year.

Most smokers begin smoking in childhood or early adolescence. Ninety per cent smoke before the age of 18. Early starters are more likely to become addicted daily smokers. Partly because the tobacco industry targets adolescents, 82,000 to 99,000 young people start smoking every day. Gro Harlem Brundtland, then director-general of the World Health Organization, angrily spoke out:

That is no freedom of choice! Civilized nations protect their people under 18--they don't let them play around with a product which statistically kills one out of two of its permanent users.

Fifty per cent of young people who continue to smoke will die from tobacco related causes. Smoking causes 90% of lung cancers and 75% of bronchitis and emphysema. On average, tobacco kills 560 people every hour, 13,000 per day or 4.9 million per year. The World Health Organization reports that not a single country fully implements all key tobacco control measures. As a result, the World Health Organization outlines six MPOWER strategies that governments can adopt to prevent tens of millions of premature smoking deaths by the middle of this century.

The six MPOWER strategies are: monitor tobacco use and prevention policies; protect people from tobacco smoke; offer help to quit tobacco use; warn about the dangers of tobacco; enforce bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship; and raise taxes on tobacco. In Canada, between 63% and 79% of the price of a package of cigarettes is tax. In comparison, the tax on cigarettes in New York is 38%. Unfortunately, governments around the world collect 500 times more money in tobacco taxes each year than they spend on anti-tobacco efforts.

The Canadian government has initiated many programs to try to lower rates of smoking in Canada. These include: encouraging Canadians to support smoke-free living; increasing product pricing through taxation; informing Canadians about the health effects of smoking and second-hand smoke; providing programs to support those who choose to quit smoking; reducing access to tobacco products by minors; and restricting tobacco product advertising and promotion.

Tobacco is a communicated disease, communicated through advertising which appeals to the psychological needs of adolescents, and sponsorship.

Many of Canada's leading cigarette brands are now sold in packs that imitate BlackBerries, cell phones and mp3 players. Making tobacco products look like everyday objects minimizes the harm associated with tobacco use and makes them socially desirable and trendy.

A 2002 study showed that tobacco companies use cigarette packaging as an integral component of marketing strategy and a vehicle for creating significant in-store presence and communicating brand image. Market testing results indicate that such imagery is so strong as to influence smokers' taste ratings of the same cigarettes when packaged differently.

I am pleased to support this bill and am encouraged that it is receiving strong support from anti-smoking and health groups. Rob Cunningham, senior policy analyst at the Canadian Cancer Society, said, “We are hopeful that MPs will adopt this bill quickly. It is a very important gain for us”.

The bill bans flavoured cigarettes and cigarillos. One-third of youth and close to half of all young adults have tried cigarillos with flavours such as chocolate mint, peach, strawberry and vanilla. These products have as much or more nicotine as cigarettes, and are just as likely to trap young people into a deadly smoking addiction. They are also the fastest growing tobacco product on the Canadian market, with 53 million sold in 2001 and 400 million in 2007.

The bill will also ban tobacco companies from advertising in print publications, repealing an exception that currently allows advertising in publications with an adult readership of at least 85%.

If the bill is passed, the revised Tobacco Act would leave tobacco companies with only two possible ways to advertise: on signs in places where minors are prohibited and in publications that are delivered by mail to an adult.

It is my hope that the time has to come for sustained funding and political support. A recent study published in the American Journal of Public Health examined state tobacco prevention and cessation funding levels from 1995 to 2003 and found that the more states spent on these programs, the larger the declines they achieved in adult smoking. The researchers also calculated that if every state had funded its program at the levels recommended by the Centers for Disease Control during the period, there would have been between two million and seven million fewer smokers in the United States.

It is also my hope that the government will engage high level opinion leaders and high profile champions to help achieve the significant health and economic benefits of a reduction in tobacco use.

We must be vigilant in identifying and raising awareness about all new forms of tobacco products which industry continues to develop.

We must recognize that the tobacco industry obstructs effective tobacco control measures and continues to promote tobacco products through all possible means, including the entertainment industry, as traditional marketing is becoming more and more limited due to the ratification by 164 countries of the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

Considerable research has suggested that youth are influenced to smoke by positive smoking portrayals in the movies, with celebrities serving as role models. A recent study in fact suggests that exposure to smoking portrayals in the media may be very important in prompting initiation among adolescents, whereas tobacco marketing may exert a specific influence on their progression to established smoking.

What steps will the government take to snuff out contraband tobacco, which accounts for 49% of cigarettes smoked in Canada, menthol cigarettes and smokeless tobacco?

Finally, when the next product emerges, and it will, let us take immediate steps to snuff it out.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a real privilege to rise today in support of this legislation, Bill C-32. This is a good news day for Canadians.

I am very pleased that the government has responded to suggestions by the New Democratic Party opposition to move in this area and that it has listened to the voices of Canadians from one end of this country to the other to try to close a very serious loophole in terms of tobacco addiction.

I have listened to some of my colleagues in the opposition, and I agree there are major areas yet to be dealt with by the government, by Parliament, issues of huge importance, like the contraband issue, like the fact that we have not been able to stop tobacco companies from designing new smokeless products. There is no end to the job at hand by parliamentarians, but we have to take this journey of cracking down one step at a time, wherever possible, when it comes to the very crass, very manipulative marketing of big tobacco. Let us face it, that is what this is all about.

We are here today because big tobacco in this country has found a loophole in the Tobacco Act and regulations that tries to restrict the sale and marketing of tobacco products. The companies have taken advantage of that loophole and designed products that are specifically targeted at creating a whole new market, another generation of smokers. Their market is dwindling, their market shares are falling, their profits are not as large as they once were, and they need to capture the hearts and minds of another group of Canadians so they are addicted to tobacco products for a lifetime.

We are talking about the most clever products one could imagine. I wish we could use props in the House. I know it is against the rules, but if we could, we would show Canadians what we are talking about, show parents how serious this issue is and how important it is that the House finally acts on cracking down on these kiddie products, these little cigarillos that are designed to look like candy or cosmetics, which have the flavours of the world embodied in them, from cotton candy to peanut butter to banana to orange to cherry, and the list goes on and on.

These are wonderfully smelling products that are designed to appeal to young people, to make them want to purchase them because they look so harmless, so appealing. Big tobacco knows that if these young people smoke these products they are more addictive than even normal, regular cigarettes. They are more harmful than the run-of-the-mill tobacco products. Worst of all, they get those kids addicted to cigarettes and smoking before they are even of legal age to smoke.

This is really about shutting down, closing a loophole that tobacco companies have taken advantage of. These products were never intended to be part of any legislation or regulations that this Parliament would allow. We cannot envisage the creativity, the ability of big tobacco to develop such products.

Who would have thought that big tobacco in this country would be so crass, so profit hungry, so disrespectful of human health and well-being that it would design products to deliberately get young people hooked? Imagine.

The bill is something that many anti-smoking activists have called for in this country for a number of years. They called on members on our side of the House, and we responded by saying this is a serious issue and it is time that we had legislation.

I brought forward a private member's bill last spring. What was important about that was not so much that I brought it forward but that it was the result of work by many young people across this country.

The youth behind this legislation have to take credit for what has happened here today. They have to claim a victory. Members saw their lobbying here in the House last week. They were responsible for bringing forward a little pencil container for every member of Parliament, which contained two products that resembled each other. They looked sweet and innocent and trendy and colourful, and they smelled pretty. One was a tobacco product and one was a candy product.

This showed all of us how far tobacco companies and large profit seeking corporations will go in order to trap young people into a lifelong addiction to smoking. They know that if they can get them at that age they can get them for a lifetime and their profits will continue to go up. It is more important than anything else we do in the House to stop tobacco companies dead in their tracks when it comes to products that appeal to children and teenagers.

The facts are in. Some in the House may say that the legislation does not go far enough. That is true. The bill could do other things. It could go after all sorts of smokeless products. The bill could look at chew products, which about 1% of the population actually uses, many of them young people. These products are typical chewing tobacco, but they are flavoured. They are interesting to chew, I guess, but they are addictive. We acknowledge that is a problem with the bill.

The bill is also flawed because although it gets at most flavours, it does not go after menthol, because that has been around since the 1920s. We would have liked the bill to close all loopholes and to crack down on all flavoured products and all types of products, not just cigarillos, but we have to make progress in this place. We cannot sit back and continue to squabble.

We have to leap at this moment. We have to capture the imagination of young people and join with them in their efforts. We have to tell them it was a good campaign. We have to tell them they did a great service to Canadians and we owe them a debt of gratitude for their leadership.

I dare say that if it had not been for those young people and many anti-smoking alliances and organizations, I would not have brought forward a bill, the Conservatives of Canada would not have promised to take up my bill in the last election, and the Minister of Health would not have brought forward a government bill that adopts many of the ideas that I raised in my private member's legislation.

It is a sequence of events that shows how important it is to listen to Canadians and to be responsive and to take steps toward ending something evil, something that is harmful, that is contrary to any notion of a healthy population, to curtail and eliminate those products.

That is what we have done today with this legislation. The government has brought in legislation that would eliminate flavoured tobacco products from the marketplace. All of those interesting flavours and smells that ensnare young people, that capture their attention and imagination and make them want to try one of those cigarillos, are gone. Furthermore, we have said that companies cannot try to get young people to start smoking by selling little cigarillos individually.

Not is only is the flavour gone, and by the way, Mr. Speaker, Let's Make Flavour ... GONE!, is the slogan of the young people who worked so hard on this issue, the Northwest Youth Action Alliance and the eastern Ontario youth action alliance, all those folks involved in stopping the sale of flavoured cigarillo products have to take credit that the bill not only bans flavoured tobacco but it bans the sale of individual cigarillos.

Even if they were not flavoured, the fact that these tiny products are sold individually without proper warning labels is also an inducement to start smoking. They are also designed to appeal directly to young people.

Young people go to corner stores and buy one of these little products for $1 or $2 because they think they are harmless. “Why not? Let's just try it for the heck of it. It is something to do, and others are doing it.” Before they know it, they are hooked. Before we know it, there are serious, high rates of smoking among young people and we have a higher than ever rate of death and illness among Canadians. It is no joke. When we look at the statistics, this is a serious issue.

Tobacco use is one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced. Do you know, Mr. Speaker, that there are more than one billion smokers in the world? Globally, the use of tobacco products is increasing, although it appears to be decreasing in some of the high-income countries. Almost half of the world's children breathe air that is polluted by tobacco smoke. The epidemic is shifting to the developing world, with more than 80% of the world's smokers living in low- and middle-income countries.

We know that tobacco kills 5.4 million people a year. That is an average of one person every six seconds, and it accounts for one in ten adult deaths worldwide. It kills up to half of all users, and it is a risk factor for six of the eight leading causes of death in the world.

Because there is a lag of several years between when people start using tobacco and when their health starts to suffer, the epidemic of disease and death has just begun. There were 100 million deaths caused by tobacco in the 20th century. If current trends continue, there will be up to one billion deaths in the 21st century.

Unchecked, tobacco-related deaths will increased to more than eight million a year by 2030, and 80% of those deaths will occur in the developing world. Therefore, every step we can take towards preventing people from getting started in the first place is absolutely critical. It is a life and death situation.

If we were to look at cigarillo products and realize that the sales of cigarillos in a few years jumped from 50,000 to 80 million or more, we get a pretty good idea of how clever the tobacco companies have been and what their intentions were. Their intentions were to design a product that would appeal to young people and get them hooked on cigarette smoking, thereby handing them a life sentence of addiction to tobacco.

Smoking statistics in Canada are real, glaring and horrific. In Canada today, smoking rates for 15- to 19-year-old boys are about 18%, and among 20- to 24-year-old boys, it is 32%. It is slightly lower than for girls, although we know the tobacco companies are busy trying to design products to appeal to young women as we speak.

On the same day that the minister introduced this groundbreaking legislation, Bill C-32, there was a program on national CBC TV called Busted. It was about the tobacco companies designing new packaging to appeal to all kinds of different populations, such as slender packs that look sexy, packages that open sideways because that is innovative, some with light coverings because people will think they are light cigarettes when those words cannot be used, or dark coverings to show that these are solid products. The tobacco companies know no end. We have to stop them each and every step of the way, every time we can.

Let us look at the statistics, in terms of cigarillos. Boys, between the ages of 15 and 19 years old, either have smoked occasionally or every day a cigarillo 30% of the time. Among 20 to 24-year-olds, 57% of young men have smoked cigarillos on an occasional or a daily basis.

Let us translate that kind of intensity of smoking among young people to the deaths we face down the road. Based on 2008 statistics, for cancer, men have an incidence rate of 11,900 and women of 5,500. For heart disease, men have an incidence rate of 6,300 and women of 3,900. For respiratory problems, men have an incidence rate of 4,900 and women of 3,500. The total of men with some sort of complication because of smoking is 23,800 and of women 14,500.

The statistics speak for themselves. I think everybody in this place knows we have to do something. This is why I recommend we support the bill even though it has a few flaws such as the absence of menthol, it does not include smokeless products like chew and it gives the tobacco manufacturers and the retailers a fairly lengthy period of time to get the products off the shelves, up to 270 days. Some would say that is a long time, and I agree. I would like our manufacturers and our retailers to take note of the debate today and come to the conclusion, I hope, that this place is united in its support for the legislation and that it will not be a matter of very much time before it is passed and they must abide by the law.

In fact, I hope, despite the concerns of members of the Liberal and Bloc parties, which I share, they will see the importance of dealing with this bill quickly, getting it to committee, seeing if there are any amendments that have to be made, which can be handled quickly and expeditiously, and getting the bill passed by both houses before we rise for the summer. By the time children start to go back to school in September, many of these products will be off the shelves, not visible and not there to tempt and tantalize them. We owe that to Canadians. We owe prompt and swift action on this legislation to prevent any more young people and children from trying these cute, trendy products, which bring death and sickness if they lead to an addiction to smoking, and we do know that they lead to addictions.

I have heard many of my colleagues suggest that the real issue is not these products and that we really have to focus all of our attention on contraband. Contraband is a very serious issue. I know about the amount of cigarettes that appear in garbage bags and are readily passed around for cheap. I know how harmful that is. However, I also know we have to deal with that issue separately.

In fact, members will know that I presented a motion to the House that had support from all parties. It called on the government to take immediate steps to deal with contraband. In fact, all three health critics of the opposition sent a letter to the Minister of Health and the Minister of Public Safety, demanding action on contraband. There is no doubt that we will keep the pressure on that issue.

However, let us not be fooled into thinking, as big tobacco would have us believe, that the real problem is not its products but contraband. While it is busy trying to go after contraband because its own markets are threatened, it refuses to acknowledge that its products designed to create a niche market to build its markets and profitability is a part of its doing and has to be stopped. The industry refuses to acknowledge its wrongdoings and how it, each and every day, tries to develop a new market and a new product to appeal to people to get them addicted to smoking because its livelihoods and profit margins depend upon it.

Let us not mix apples and oranges. The bill is designed to get after those kiddie products. It is designed to stop those flavoured cigarillos. It says that cigarillos must be packaged into containers of no less than 20 and they must have proper warnings. That is the objective the bill.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the debate on Bill C-32. This bill has a commendable objective, which is to discourage tobacco use among young people by limiting availability and reducing the types of tobacco products on the market.

Needless to say, the Bloc Québécois supports this bill, and we are not alone. Earlier, I got out a May 26 press release from the Coalition québécoise pour le contrôle du tabac that welcomes the federal government's tobacco bill. Louis Gauvin, the spokesperson for the coalition, says:

Even though it does not go as far as we would have liked, the legislation contains crucial provisions that will provide much more protection for young people against the tobacco industry's marketing strategies.

We know that the tobacco industry targets young people. Because nicotine is addictive, young people risk being hooked for a long time. The member for St. Paul's said earlier that someone who is unfortunately addicted to nicotine will likely have to try a number of times to quit smoking. She talked about eight times. My mother, who was a smoker, did not have to try that many times. She tried to quit once in her life and fortunately was successful the first time. But addiction is a fact, and that is why companies target young people.

I digressed briefly, but I will continue. Louis Gauvin says:

From now on, the industry will no longer be able to mask the harmful effects of its products using fruit and candy flavours...These products, which came on the market barely five years ago, are alone responsible for the increase in tobacco use by young Quebeckers. Finally, companies will be prohibited from marketing these deadly chocolate- and strawberry-flavoured products in fun, multicoloured kiddie packs.

Continuing with the press release:

The most recent research shows that tobacco use, even when very limited, can lead to dependency. Young people who have tried cigarillos [a type of little cigar that is even sold singly] can easily develop a dependency on nicotine, since the nicotine content in these is similar to the amount in a cigarette. They are then at risk of changing to cigarettes because they are very much cheaper when bought in large quantities. In other words, “even if they account for only a small part of the market, cigarillos play a major role in introducing young people to smoking”.

I will share a personal experience if I may. When I was 12, 13, 14, like a lot of kids, I had some people in my group of friends who smoked occasionally, and some others a bit more regularly. As I have said, my mother smoked as well. So yes, I have sneaked my mother's cigarettes. We took them to the park and we puffed away on them. Then we found out we could get them at the corner store. I must point out that we were certainly not of legal age to be buying them. I do not know what the age limit was at the time, but I am sure that you could not get packages of cigarettes legally at 12 or 13.

However, they sold little cigars with a plastic filter end and a grape flavour. Grape flavoured cigarillos, with a picture of a grape on the package. They were sold in a pack of four or five, I do not remember exactly. When we started smoking those cigarillos, it was a lot more interesting, because inhaling smoke that smelled and tasted like grapes was a lot easier than inhaling the smoke from a regular cigarette.

I am therefore convinced that this kind of marketing was created by the companies to target young people. I remember that we preferred the cigarillos to cigarettes but I am sure the harmful effects were the same. I will assure you, Mr. Speaker, that I did not continue along that path. I quit completely when my mother did, when I was 14 or 15. Everybody in the family was pleased. My brother, unfortunately, continued to smoke for a long time, but he finally quit as well. At a certain point, a person finally listens to reason despite the harmful efforts of the tobacco companies.

As I said, the Bloc Québécois is in favour in principle of Bill C-32, although it is not particularly useful in Quebec because the Government of Quebec already has more severe restrictions on cigarillos.

The cigarillos we are talking about and all other tobacco products should be subject to the same bans as cigarettes.

As with cigarettes, advertising of tobacco products to young people under 18 must be banned. In addition, the message warning of the dangers of smoking must be applied to all these products, and the products must be hidden from public view.

The companies have tried to convince us, without saying so and just by the product's appearance, that tobacco was less harmful, that it smelled good and that the taste of it was much milder and more pleasant. My colleagues and I talked about all sorts of flavours such as strawberry, chocolate and vanilla. I know we are not allowed to show any props here and I do not want to advertise, but I have in the palm of my hand one of these vanilla cigarillos. I do not want to show it or hold it up to the camera, but the packaging is delightful. It looks like a treat or a candy. A young person getting hold of this would think it was a candy more than anything else. However, far be it from me to advertise it or light it here.

All of us in the House of Commons were given a small package by an anti-smoking coalition to show us how the tobacco companies use this type of marketing to disguise their product, which is in fact harmful. We saw an image of candies and real treats interspersed with tobacco products, which were presented as if they were treats. You cannot tell which is which. There was nothing to indicate that what I had in my hand earlier was harmful to my health. The law in Quebec requires it, however, for tobacco products. Fortunately this will change with Bill C-32.

Some of the demands I mentioned earlier are in part covered by Bill C-32. Still, it must be added that the federal government needs to take stronger action, in connection with cigarette smuggling, among other things. Action must be taken to limit the supply of illegal tobacco products as much as possible, for they are available to minors as well. If the supply is cut, young people will have less access to tobacco products, especially those at lower cost. The low price is, of course, why tobacco smuggling exists.

While police action is needed, certain regulations should be changed to discourage smugglers. There is talk of eliminating the source of supply, which is still the best way of preventing smuggling. There is a proposal to prevent unlicensed manufacturers from acquiring the raw materials and equipment used to produce cigarettes. It has also been suggested that the licences of tobacco manufacturers who fail to obey the law be revoked and an effective system established for marking cigarette packages—the term is traceability— so that tobacco deliveries can be more closely monitored.

Efforts could also be made to persuade the United States federal government to close the factories of illegal manufacturers on the American side of the border. In some places, it is easy to cross by boat. Everyone has seen television reports about this kind of thing. It is very easy to smuggle goods across the U.S.—Canadian border. Not everyone is caught. We should try, therefore, to persuade the American government.

Finally, there are proposals to increase the fee charged to obtain a federal licence to manufacture tobacco products. It could be increased to $5 million instead of the laughable $5,000 it is today. These are some of the measures proposed by the Bloc Québécois to help reduce smuggling.

About a year ago, on May 7, 2008, the public safety minister of the time, who is now the Minister of International Trade, announced an RCMP strategy to fight tobacco smuggling. There were three objectives: dismantle the production facilities, disrupt the supply and distribution networks, and seize illegal tobacco and related products of crime. We never heard any details about the implementation of this strategy and the methods to be used were never clearly explained. The only conclusion we can draw is the results have fallen far short of the expectations.

Ever since 2003, and even before, the Bloc Québécois has been constantly calling on governments of all stripes to act vigorously to prevent the explosion of cigarette smuggling. The Bloc even proposed measures to fight this crime, which undercuts all our efforts to discourage smoking, especially among young people.

The conclusion after a year is that the strategy has not been very well defined. According to several studies, illegal tobacco products supply one-quarter of the Quebec and Ontario market. The federal and provincial governments lose nearly $2 billion a year in taxes. It may be even more by now. Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada is right to emphasize that the reduced cost of contraband cigarettes is undermining the progress we have been making in reducing smoking, especially among young people.

I am talking about contraband products today because all the efforts we might make in the House as parliamentarians, through things like Bill C-32 or other measures to reduce smoking among young people, will be in vain if we do not attack the root of the problem, which is smuggled cigarettes.

The Bloc Québécois demands that the RCMP utilize every legal means to effectively combat this illegal importing of tobacco. We absolutely must fight the evil at its root by taking action on both supply and demand. If that means going so far as to seize the automobiles of people going to stock up at the many illegal smoke shacks, so be it. Obviously this would be an excellent way to deter the resellers.

This problem is very expensive for Quebec and Canadian taxpayers, and deprives regular merchants who have the right to sell tobacco—even though we are trying to reduce the availability of tobacco products and cigarettes are no longer displayed openly in convenience stores—of legitimate income because of this unfair competition. This is why it is absolutely necessary to tackle cigarette smuggling.

To return to the famous cigarillos—I have even given my own personal example—I would describe their attractiveness to children as a con game, because of what the tobacco companies have managed to do, which is to present them almost as if they were candy. The variety of cigarillo flavours makes them seem less harmful to children and youth. The trick lies in perception. I think the kids will have the impression that they are less harmful because of the better taste and smell. All the flavours come from the natural world, but I think that is exactly what these companies were aiming for—to ensure that there is less of the bad cigarette smell so that children are not put off so much and are attracted to the product. As a result of this con game, children really like the cigarillos. Yet those little cigars pose as much risk to their health in terms of nicotine dependence as real cigarettes.

One Health Canada study done in 2000 concluded that cigarillos contain between 67% and 200% more tar than standard cigarettes. Furthermore, unfiltered cigarillos contain twice as much nicotine.

According to the Coalition québécoise pour le contrôle du tabac, there are many reasons why children are attracted to cigarillos. First, the unit price is very accessible. One cigarillo can be bought at a convenience store for $1. This used to be possible, but things are changing. As I said earlier, it is no longer possible in Quebec. There are also the attractive flavours and packaging, as I demonstrated earlier.

The selling of individual cigarettes is prohibited in Quebec. The reason is quite simple: single cigarettes and cigarillos are more financially accessible. Children generally do not have much money, and buying cigarillos is easier and more accessible when they cost $1. In my time, it may have been 10¢ or 25¢, and we were all able to collect enough coins from our piggy banks to buy one cigarette or cigarillo. Not so long ago this was also going on in Quebec, and it may be happening, as it should not, in Canada. This will be corrected when Bill C-32 comes into force.

Quebec law prohibits selling to minors. Unfortunately, certain merchants do not abide by the law, and I am sure this is not just in Quebec. According to Health Canada data, nearly 86% of merchants were complying with the law in 2007.

Still, that left 12% who were not, who were selling tobacco products to minors.

The survey by the Institut de la statistique du Québec, the ISQ, estimates that approximately 38% of students purchase cigarettes themselves at a shop. In other words, at some point, the word gets around. It is just a matter of finding the convenience store or shop that will sell tobacco products and all the children will go there. Every group has one youngster who looks older than the others. That was the case in our group, and it wasn’t me. There is always someone who looks older and succeeds in duping the merchant and buying cigarettes or alcohol. There is always a way: young people are imaginative.

Therefore it is up to the merchant to be very vigilant and to require ID when someone who looks young comes in to buy cigarettes or cigarillos.

When it comes to flavours, I would again point out that cigarillos come in many flavours. We heard the list earlier. I kept a copy of the list here to show the extent to which the marketing of this kind of product was probably aimed much more at children and young people. They come in raspberry, vanilla, cherry, spearmint, strawberry, cinnamon and even rum. Some may say they are trying to attract adults with this, but in any event, the intention behind this marketing is really very clear. Flavouring tobacco products obviously encourages people to take up smoking by making their first puffs sweeter and more pleasant.

They have chosen attractive packaging. Catching people’s eye, the visual aspect, is very important. Cigarillo packages conjure up treats and candy. There are no warnings on the boxes. As I was saying just now, when they are purchased as singles, the little package has absolutely no indication of the danger of inhaling, really of smoking, and using these products. You can even buy chewing tobacco now. It is also presented as an attractive product.

I said that I have smoked, but I have to say I have never tried that. It completely repulses me, but I think some children who like to try things, if it is presented in a way that it looks almost like a treat, a candy, they are certainly going to try it. Imagine what a catastrophe it may be when they put that in their mouth. In the United States, studies have been done, and people who chewed tobacco were more likely to develop cancers of the mouth.

I said earlier that we have all had the evidence from an anti-smoking coalition placed on our desks, showing that these products were hidden among the treats and the attempt was made to pass them off as candy. We were also given a brochure with information.

We are told that the market for new flavoured tobacco products has grown by over 400%. In 2001, 50,000 items were sold, and in 2006 it was 81 million items. We can see what a master stroke of marketing this has been, one that has been diabolically effective, but at the same time a damaging and terrible thing for our young people’s health.

I mentioned the Institut de la statistique du Québec. I have more information, in particular about a Quebec survey on tobacco, alcohol, drugs and gambling among secondary school students. Statistics were collected in the fall of 2006 from nearly 5,000 students.

The ISQ found that students were starting to smoke cigars between secondary 2 and 3, and boys and girls were using these products in equal numbers. In the month before the survey, 22% of boys and 21% of girls had smoked a cigarillo. In secondary 5, more than a third of students said they had smoked a cigarillo in the month before the survey. Eight out of 10 students who smoked or were starting to smoke cigarettes every day or occasionally had smoked a cigar. One out of 10 students who did not smoke cigarettes had even tried cigars or cigarillos.

These statistics, which have been collected not only in Quebec but more or less everywhere in Canada, show that tougher legislation has got to be enacted. While Bill C-32 is not perfect, it is a step in the right direction.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand today to speak to Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Tobacco Act.

On April 23, in an effort to hold the government to account, I submitted a question to the order paper asking two things.

First, what is the government's strategy to combat the illegal cigarette trade and ensure tobacco control?

Second, what has the government done to follow through on the September 17, 2008, commitment to ban flavoured tobacco products that appeal to children and ban tobacco advertising in print and electronic media that can be seen and read by our youth?

While it appears that Bill C-32 does little to answer my first question, which I will address shortly, it is clear that the bill seeks to amend the Tobacco Act to provide the additional protection of youth from tobacco marketing and the other things as the hon. member mentioned.

Bill C-32 was introduced last Thursday before World No Tobacco Day. The bill is also part of the federal tobacco control strategy, the government's policy framework to reduce death and disease caused by tobacco use, slated for 2011.

I am pleased that on World No Tobacco Day, the World Health Organization decided to promote the evidence-based approach by the former minister of health, Allan Rock, on the graphic labelling of cigarette packages. We know that tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death. More than five million people die from the effects of tobacco every year. That is more than those who die from HIV-AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. It is the only legal consumer product that kills when used exactly as the manufacturer intends. Up to half of all smokers will die from a tobacco-related disease. Second-hand smoke harms everyone who is exposed to it.

Tobacco companies spend tens of millions of dollars every year turning new users into addicts and keeping current users from quitting. Through advertising and promotional campaigns, including the use of carefully crafted package designs, the tobacco industry continues to divert attention from the deadly effects of its products. More and more countries are fighting back by requiring that tobacco packages graphically show the dangers of tobacco, as we have done in Canada, and have called for the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. They use the MPower technical assistance package developed by the World Health Organization to meet their commitments under this international treaty.

Effective health warnings, especially those that include pictures, have been proven to motivate users to quit and reduce the appeal of tobacco for those who are not yet addicted. Despite this fact, nine out of ten people live in countries that do not require warnings with pictures on tobacco packages.

Nicotine is a highly addictive substance. Warning people about its true risks can go a long way toward reducing tobacco addiction. Requiring warnings on tobacco packages is a simple, cheap and effective strategy that can vastly reduce tobacco use and save lives.

Tobacco use is still too prevalent. Tobacco does a great deal of harm and is responsible for the deaths of 37,000 Canadians every year, deaths that could be prevented.

Additionally, in 2008, over three billion more contraband cigarettes were sold in Canada than in 2007, three billion cigarettes that are now more available to Canadian youth.

Contraband cigarettes cost the Canadian government nearly $2.4 billion a year in lost revenue that could be invested quite usefully in programs and health research.

I hope that in writing Bill C-32 and engaging thorough stakeholder consultations rather than information sessions, the government sought to push for more interdepartmental coordination, re-evaluated the failed enforcement strategy that has seen the number of contraband cigarettes rise rapidly and pushed for the cheap and effective strategy of warning labels on tobacco packages. It is not enough for the government to ban something without finding out about and dealing with the other places where this same product can come into Canada, in the same way that we are fighting so terribly about contraband cigarettes.

Right now on the playgrounds in Ontario, 48.6% of cigarette butts found are contraband, illegal cigarettes that kids are buying out of duffle bags in the parking lot for $6 a carton. This is the way kids are getting addicted. This bill is a good first step to deal with flavoured tobacco, but it will do nothing unless the government actually works much harder to deal first-hand with contraband cigarettes.

Bill C-32 repeals the exemption that permits tobacco advertising in publications with an adult readership of not less than 85%. It prohibits the packaging, importation for sale, distribution and sale of little cigars and blunt wraps unless they are in a package that contains at least 20 units. We know the price point for tobacco is very important to children. Long ago we eliminated the kiddie packs and now it is important to ensure that this also applies to cigars and blunt wraps.

It also prohibits the manufacture and sale of cigarettes, little cigars and blunt wraps that contain the additives set out in a new schedule to the act, as well as the packaging of those products in a manner that suggests that they contain a prohibited additive. It also prohibits the manufacture and sale of tobacco products unless all the required information about their composition is submitted to the minister.

Bill C-32 also aims at protecting children and youth from tobacco industry marketing practices that encourage them to use tobacco products. These marketing practices included the use of flavourings and additives that would appeal to children and youth, the availability of little cigars and blunt wraps, sheets or tubes or tobacco in small quantities and kiddie packs and an increasing number of tobacco ads in daily newspapers and free entertainment weeklies.

Little cigars, also known as cigarillos and blunt wraps, are marketed today with fruit flavours such as grape, cherry, peach, banana split, tropical punch and additives such as vitamins, sugar and others that taste like candy that mask the harshest of the tobacco and appeal to children and youth.

Research from both American sources and the tobacco industry's own internal documents released through court cases indicate that the addition of fruit and candy flavours to tobacco products make them more appealing to new users. The tobacco industry's internal documents show that flavours and additives increase the “try factor”.

There is no question that California ads that portray tobacco industry executives corralling youth or sitting in smoky boardrooms saying, “Our customers are dying off, we had better go get the young ones”, has been clearly demonstrated with the advent of these truly sinister products.

This is a growing problem. Wholesale sales of little cigars have increased from 53 million units in 2001 to 403 million units in 2007, making them the fastest growing tobacco product on the Canadian market. Bill C-32 would amend the Tobacco Act by prohibiting the addition to little cigars, cigarettes and blunt wraps of fruit flavours and additives that would appeal to children and youth. It would also prohibit the representation of these flavours and additives on the package, such as a picture or a graphic.

The amended Tobacco Act would also provide Health Canada the flexibility, through governor in council authority, to ban other appealing additives or include other product categories in the flavour ban at any time in the future if the evidence indicated that these were serving as inducements to youth.

Regarding minimum package requirements, unlike cigarettes that must be sold in packages of 20, little cigars and blunt wraps are often sold individually and priced as little as $1. Bill C-32 would amend the Tobacco Act by extending the minimum quantity provisions that exist for cigarettes, little cigars and blunt wraps, requiring they be packaged in quantities of at least 20. This change would end the industry practice of selling these products in single or small kiddie packs that are attractive youth because of their cheaper price.

Regarding advertising, although there are currently restrictions on tobacco advertising in both print and electronic formats, the tobacco industry has been taking full advantage of an exemption allowing them to advertise in publications that have at least 85% adult readership. A recent resurgence of tobacco advertising, over 400 ads nationwide between November 2007 and December 2008, has exposed youth audiences to tobacco sales pitches.

Full colour tobacco ads have been appearing in daily newspapers, magazines and in free entertainment weekly papers. The free entertainment papers are available to anybody by way of a curb-side box, making it impossible to restrict access by children or determine if the readership is at least 85% adult.

Between November 2007 and December 2008, tobacco companies spent approximately $4.47 million to place nationwide ads in print publications, a dramatic increase from the amount spent in the previous 14 months. The proposed legislation will repeal this exemption that allows tobacco ads to be placed in a print publication, again with adult readership of not less than 85%.

The legislation to ban flavoured tobacco is important. However, in many areas it misses the point. In my order paper question I asked whether the government would develop a strategy to combat contraband tobacco. It is clear that Bill C-32 simply would add regulations and would do little to keep contraband out of the hands of children. It makes the legal industry deal with the problem caused by the illegal industry. As we know, children are unable to purchase the legal product.

I agree with the stakeholder groups such as the Ontario Korean Businessmen's Association, which claims that Bill C-32 will have no impact on the true problem, how children start smoking in the first place. It is the illegal product that causes the rise in consumption and the government continues to do nothing to combat the wave of illegal manufactured cigarettes from being distributed in high schools for, as I said, as little as $6 a carton. In fact, we have seen flyers where people can dial for a carton, except it is not in a carton. It is a garbage bag full of cheap cigarettes delivered right to one's door. We know these are the same organizations that also deal in guns and drugs and this must be stopped.

The Ontario Korean Businessmen's Association says that it does not work. If a person calls the local police, it takes six hours for a police officer to get there. These business people can actually see people selling things right outside their stores. There needs to be at least a 1-800 number and a task force, for which the RCMP called, where all levels of policing could come together to deal once and for all with this dangerous and illegal trade.

The RCMP has also called for the dismantling of the illegal manufacturing sites and called for a multi-jurisdictional department task force. Yet the government has issued licences to illegal operations to make them legal and the task force apparently has never met.

As I mentioned before, illegal tobacco costs taxpayers $2.4 billion a year in lost tax revenue and undermines every single tobacco control law and regulation currently being administered by the federal and provincial governments.

The sale of illegal tobacco is more than just a tobacco industry issue. This growing trade affects everyone. It deprives Canadian governments of significant revenues, it fosters other criminal activities, it has an impact on public health and provides unregulated, easy and affordable access to tobacco products.

There is also a direct correlation between the rise in contraband tobacco consumption and the change in government in 2006. Looking at the statistics for the growth of illegal tobacco sales, we can see that 33% was the national average last year, up from 16.5% in 2006. This is a jump up over 100%. In 2008 it was 48.6% on the playgrounds in Ontario schools and 40.1% in Quebec.

The Liberals had a strategy in place and multi-pronged approach to deal with problems, but the Conservative government let the rate of contraband consumption grow exponentially. Now we have learned that the American Secretary for Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, knew nothing of the huge problem in tobacco smuggling until after she came out of the meeting with the Minister of Public Safety. She only responded to this problem after it was raised by a journalist. This is totally irresponsible.

Why is the government refusing to deal with contraband tobacco? Contraband causes huge losses in tax revenues. Does it not need the money? It sees more and more Canadian children becoming addicted on cheap cigarettes and allows smugglers and members of organized crime to profit off the illegal trade.

As I said, it is the same people smuggling the cigarettes who are smuggling the drugs and the guns. This is organized crime. We should look at the statistics. There were 13 billion estimated total Canadian purchases of illegal cigarettes in 2008 compared to 10 billion in 2007.

It is time that the government got smart on crime. If the government were serious about reducing youth smoking, it would consider stopping youth from having access to these cigarettes. The government needs to deliver a plan and enforcement strategy to stop the importation of illegal black market tobacco.

In a Hamilton Spectator article written on April 30, 2009, it was reported that the jump in smoking rates was directly correlated to easy access to contraband and tax free cigarettes that sell for a fraction of the regular price. Rob Cunningham, a senior policy analyst for the Canadian Cancer Society, mentioned in the article that he was very concerned about the impact of inexpensive contraband cigarettes on smoking rates.

Public health officials estimate that 200 contraband cigarettes cost $8 to $15, compared with the usual $55 to $80. Mr. Cunningham continued to say that higher tobacco taxes were the single most effective measure to reduce smoking, and the presence of widespread, inexpensive contraband tobacco was dramatically impeding the progress that we would otherwise be making.

The government must address the fact that contraband cigarettes are the cheapest and easiest cigarettes to get for children. I am concerned that in the media backgrounder, the department skirts the issue entirely by saying that contraband is the purview of Public Safety. While this may be true, it completely ignores the fact that an entire strategy is undermined by the lack of action by whatever department is in charge of contraband, and it shows that the government is working in silence, to the total detriment of the health of Canadians.

These are only some of the stakeholder reaction groups we have heard so far. However, many groups, including Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada and the Canadian Medical Association have been pushing the government for laws that would crack down on the sale and marketing of cigarillos.

Paul Thomey, the chair of the tobacco policy for the Canadian Lung Association, is quoted in the government press release accompanying the bill stating that these are positive steps forward in the fight against tobacco, and that strong measures such as these not only will protect Canada's children from the harmful effects of smoking but will also serve to curtail industry tactics aimed at marketing its products to the youth of this country.

I say again, banning these products in this country will not do anything if they just arrive in duffle bags and dunnage bags from across the border or, as this industry has done before, from Canada, outside and back into Canada, and then dealt with in the black market.

The president of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Robert Ouellet, also quoted in the government press release, thanked the government on behalf of Canada's doctors and their patients, adding that closing loopholes is a step forward in protecting our children from a deadly addiction to tobacco.

Despite our concerns that Bill C-32 does nothing to address the contraband issue that is at the heart of youth smoking rates, the Liberal Party will support the bill in principle. However, we will be asking the government questions at committee. Why does the bill not include restrictions against menthol, and why will there be a 270 day period before store owners must take these products off their shelves?

We will also investigate whether the ban on flavours can be extended to chewing tobacco and smokeless tobacco as a kiddie product, as one quarter of the users are children under 19. Flavouring smokeless with candy flavours is a problem so similar to the flavouring of little cigarillos that it makes no sense to exclude this one category.

We understand that smokeless is not as large a problem as smoking, but it is significant enough to worry. For every five boys who smoke cigarettes, there is one smokeless user. Adding smokeless to the bill would require a very simple amendment to the schedule. Although it could be done by regulation later, there is no reason to delay.

Bill C-32 is a step in the right direction to protect Canadians, and youth in particular, from tobacco marketing. Tobacco products should not be marketed as inoffensive. By prohibiting the sale of cigarettes, little cigars and blunt wraps that contain a series of additives that have flavouring properties, and by prohibiting packaging that suggests that these products contain these additives, the bill aims at avoiding the misleading marketing of tobacco products.

By prohibiting advertising in all types of magazines and newspapers regardless of their readership, the bill ensures that all Canadians, and youth in particular, will not be exposed to tobacco sales pitches.

However, as I mentioned in detail, this bill will not solve the problem of smoking among youth altogether, and that is because the bill fails to address the question of contraband tobacco which is an important source of supply for youth, contraband products being cheap and easily accessible.

Despite the omission of contraband, the Liberal Party will support the bill at second reading. We look forward to engaging in a deeper study at the health committee. We will take witness testimony at committee into consideration in assessing whether this bill should be amended.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in this House to urge all members to support Bill C-32, the bill which cracks down on tobacco marketing aimed at youth.

Smoking is Canada's most serious preventable public health issue. It lies at the root of deadly conditions such as emphysema, lung cancer and cardiac disease. Every year these conditions kill thousands of Canadians and cause suffering for thousands more. We want to reduce future suffering by helping to prevent young Canadians from starting to smoke in the first place. That is why our government is following through on a key campaign commitment by proposing these crucial amendments to the Tobacco Act.

These changes will help protect our children from marketing practices designed to entice them into smoking. By amending the Tobacco Act, we can keep more young people from experimenting with an addictive substance. By doing so, we can shield them from unwittingly laying the foundation for a possible lifelong addiction with potentially serious health consequences.

Through this bill, we are taking a tougher stand against tobacco products that are packaged, priced and flavoured to appeal directly to young people. For example, Bill C-32 seeks tighter restrictions on tobacco advertising. It also seeks to rid store shelves of certain products tailored and packaged specifically for young people.

For example, in 2007 more than 400 million little cigars, or cigarillos, were sold in Canada. Many of these come in flavours such as chocolate, bubble gum and tropical punch, flavours designed to entice young people to try smoking. Flavoured sheets or tubes made from tobacco, known as blunt wraps, are also marketed to young people and sold individually or in low-priced kiddie packs.

These types of marketing strategies have to stop. Tobacco is not candy and should never be mistaken as such. It is time that we recognized these kinds of products for what they are: simple enticements aimed at luring non-smokers into a potential lifetime of addiction. It is for this reason that Bill C-32 proposes making it illegal to add flavours to cigarillos, cigarettes and blunts.

Another factor encouraging young people to try smoking is pricing. If a product is inexpensive, more young people are likely to try it. More than a decade ago, the Tobacco Act was changed to require that cigarettes be sold in packages of at least 20. This change was made precisely so they would be less affordable for our children. Today under Bill C-32 we are going a step further by proposing that the same rule be extended to cigarillos and blunts for exactly the same reason.

This legislation proposes new action on banning flavours to make tobacco less enticing to young people. It proposes new measures to make it less affordable and therefore less accessible. In addition, we are proposing new restrictions on advertising to ensure our youth are not tempted.

Indeed, it is our goal to put an end to a resurgence of tobacco advertising capable of reaching out to our youth through a variety of publications. As it stands now, the Tobacco Act prohibits most advertising; however, advertising in publications claiming an adult readership of at least 85% is still permitted.

In the first few years following the last amendments to the Tobacco Act, the industry did not actively advertise, but things have changed. Over the last two years we have seen a new wave of advertising aimed at young people. Of particular concern are the many free publications with content geared to teens, publications that are available in curbside boxes, at malls and bus stops in just about every community across our country.

What is clear is that in the years following the last changes to the law, the tobacco industry has adapted. It has poked and prodded and found the loopholes it needs to penetrate and get its products into the hands of young Canadians. By doing so, the industry seeks to recruit a new generation to replace the thousands upon thousands who have either fortunately succeeded at quitting, or unfortunately lost their lives prematurely.

Let me be clear. In the face of an industry preying upon a new generation to protect its profits, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, I am dedicated to taking action that will protect the health of this country's future, and I am proud to say that I am far from alone. In fact, I am but one of several members of this House who feel the same way. I say so because this House and the Standing Committee on Health are composed of dedicated members from all parties who have advocated valiantly for the kinds of changes we seek in Bill C-32.

In particular, I want to point to the great work the hon. member for Winnipeg North has undertaken during her time as a member of Parliament. Many of her ideas are included in Bill C-32 and I want to thank the member for her support and efforts in this regard.

In closing, let me summarize some things that we know in relation to this issue. One, we know that the vast majority of adult smokers became addicted when they were in their teens. Two, we know that if people have not started smoking by the age of 19, they are unlikely to ever become a lifelong smoker. Three, using the illustrative examples that I have provided, the tobacco industry is alive and well and trying as hard as it can to exploit gaps in the law to reach more and more young people with its products to start them smoking. As a result, we have an obligation to update our law to make tobacco products less appealing to young people, less affordable and less accessible.

Finally, when it comes to a question like this one and the problems that Bill C-32 seeks to address, I call upon all parties to seek a strong consensus in favour of this very important bill. No matter what party members belong to, what region we hail from, or what community we represent, we are all elected to protect the health of our citizens and safeguard the future of our country. This is precisely what Bill C-32 seeks to do.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

moved that Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Tobacco Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to respond to my colleague's questions. Before I get to his specific questions, perhaps we will revert to the more traditional response, which is to lay out the anticipated business for the week ahead.

As members know, today we completed debate at third reading stage of Bill S-2, the customs act. We will continue and hopefully complete the second reading stage of Bill C-20, Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act. Following Bill C-20, we will call at second reading, Bill C-30, Senate Ethics Act.

Tonight the House will go into committee of the whole to consider the main estimates of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Tomorrow we will begin debate on Bill C-24, Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act. The back-up bills for tomorrow will be any unfinished business left over from today.

Next week we will continue with any unfinished business from this week, with the addition of Bill C-15, drug offences, which is at report stage and third reading stage.

We will also consider Bill C-32, the bill that will crack down on tobacco marketing aimed at our youth, and Bill C-19, investigative hearings and recognizance with conditions. These bills are at second reading.

As I have been doing, I will also give priority consideration to any bills that are reported back from our standing committees.

Finally, I would like to note that on Monday, June 1, at 10 a.m., there will be a memorial service in the Senate chamber to honour the memory of parliamentarians who have passed away since April 30, 2008.

As well, in response to the specific questions, the hon. opposition House leader would know full well that we just had our House leaders meeting of all four parties and their whips. I thought I took extraordinary steps to inform my colleagues about the anticipated business that I intend to call between now and the House rising on June 23. He has all of that information. He knows as well that much of this is tentative and subject to change because we do not know exactly how fast committees will move and how long debate will take in this place. Having said that, I have tried to be as transparent and as open with my colleagues as possible.

As far as specific questions about the three remaining supply days, I will be designating them in the future, although I did indicate tentative dates for all three, and the member is well aware of that information; in fact, I think it has been made public.

Tobacco Advertising

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, today I salute all those who helped bring to fruition important legislation that cracks down on tobacco marketing aimed at young people.

I thank all those involved, especially the women who saw the devastating impact of tobacco on health and the importance of acting to save lives: women such as Cynthia Callard at Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada, who prodded all of us for years to eliminate the marketing of fruit- and candy-flavoured products and convinced me to introduce a private member's bill; young women such as youth public health specialist Angela McKercher-Mortimer who, with the Eastern Ontario Youth Coalition, helped coordinate the packages on members' desks today; women such as Jennifer McKibbon, who was a key organizer with Northwestern Youth Action Alliance in its Flavour...Gone! campaign and who continues to press for the inclusion of flavoured chew in the bill; and women such as our federal health minister, who made this the subject matter of a government bill and who has committed to shepherd Bill C-32 through Parliament.

Together, we absolutely refuse to let sinister packaging and deceptive flavourings turn today's youth into tomorrow's death statistics.

Cracking Down on Tobacco Marketing Aimed at Youth Act

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Tobacco Act.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)